


It's Only Castles Burning

by Mosca



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Activism, Body Dysphoria, Civil War (Marvel), Friends to Lovers, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Mutants, New York City, Rough Sex, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 16:11:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6086236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the time paradox resolves itself, the old (new) Hank and the new (old) Logan find themselves in the right universe to fall in love. And then Civil War breaks out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Only Castles Burning

**Author's Note:**

> This happened because I saw _Days of Future Past_ while I was rereading the entire _Civil War_ comics arc. It's the unfilmable X-Men Movieverse/MCU version of _Civil War,_ from Hank's perspective, with hopefully a more satisfying outcome and moral exploration. _Hopefully._
> 
> Also there is porn. Gay porn in which one of the participants is a giant furry blue mutant. If this is not your kink, you can scroll and still get most of the story. If this is your kink, keep in mind that there is a lot of story in between the porn.
> 
> One of the purposes of DoFP was to permanently write out the first generation of X-Men Movieverse actors by featuring both generations of actors, with time travel as an excuse. Since this fic is set in the rebooted present that the movies will henceforth never explore, I have to keep dealing with the dual actor problem. The Hank McCoy in this story is the version played by Nicholas Hoult, and Mystique is the version played by Jennifer Lawrence. However, Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr are their Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen versions, respectively. All of the other significant characters have only been played by one actor (at the time of writing, at least), so you should picture Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde, etc. She-Hulk has never appeared on screen in a Marvel movie, but Tumblr convinced me that Laverne Cox would make an excellent Jen Walters.
> 
> This story includes canon-consistent violence, rough sex and pain play, drunk sex, mentions of unhealthy past relationships, intrusive telepathy, problems that would be solved if people weren't so damn taciturn, questionable research ethics, non-violent methods of resistance, jokes you will only get if you've read the comics, and an affectionate depiction of New York City that owes more to real life than to Marvel.
> 
> I made a playlist of songs to listen to while writing this, and it makes a good soundtrack for reading the fic. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuxCebbS5IW_SS0tUJKxNAgUduJwxuOYL If you like, you can think of it as the songs Kitty put on Hank's phone so he can drown out the jerks on the commuter train.
> 
> The title is from “Don’t Let it Bring You Down” by Neil Young. Section headers are from the following songs, in order: “Southern Cross,” Crosby, Stills & Nash; “Mr. November,” The National; “I’m Not Your Hero,” Tegan & Sara; “The Eye,” Brandi Carlile; “Lungs,” Townes Van Zandt; “Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” Warren Zevon; and “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out,” Cat Stevens. All of this music is in the playlist above. 
> 
> Shdwsilk and Starcityrebels beta read this, as well as audiencing and cheerleading at various stages, and did all those things with grace, brilliance, and insight. Amy went to see DoFP with me, and in a way, this story is her fault.

***

**CHAPTER ONE**

_Think of how many times I have fallen_  
Spirits are using me, larger voices callin’  
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten 

***

Hank had been waiting forty-two years for Logan to lose his memory. A Biblical time frame, wandering in the worst case scenario, then deposited blind into what must have seemed like Paradise. Hank envied the joy of Logan's deliverance. All Hank had was the day-to-day, the accumulation of petty disappointments and small wars, his battles with the administration of the Xavier Institute sometimes as furious as his encounters with superhuman evil.

So he interacted with Logan as if nothing had changed. They chatted about their students; they shared beers and Rangers games. The deepest Hank traveled into the personal was, "You found the salve, right?"

"Salve?" Logan's altered past had not diminished his ability to pack entire paragraphs into a word.

"It reduces the pain when you bare your claws. I developed it for you."

"Where is it?"

"I don't know where you keep it. I’ve been making it for you for years." Hank rolled his eyes. "Check your medicine cabinet when you get home.”

"Thanks." Logan returned to his beer.

They watched the hockey game for a while. Maybe it was the beer, or the especially long tenure committee meeting Hank had endured that day, but he set free the question he'd been hanging onto for weeks. "How did I die?"

Logan looked startled for a moment before he answered. "The Sentinels killed you in your bed. They woke you with a spike through the chest. It was early, before things got really bad. The beginning of things turning bad, maybe. Since you were a public figure, a lot of people got upset. Even humans were calling for the Sentinels to be destroyed."

Logan had buried the lede as usual. "Public figure?"

"You were the Secretary of Mutant Affairs through three different Presidents."

Hank couldn't do anything but laugh. "I was a _politician?_ Talk about an apocalyptic alternate reality."

"You fell into it," Logan said. "Or got pushed. But you were good at it. You seemed to like it."

"Even so," Hank said. "I think I like this reality better."

Logan squinted off at the wall. He'd never had to explain to Hank that his mind and his memories were often a burden, the only pain that didn't heal immediately. "You're the only one who's asked about my memories," Logan said. "Other than Charles, who mostly sifts through 'em without my permission."

"I'm curious about the unknown, I guess," Hank said.

"Sure." This was, Hank suspected, Logan's shorthand for disagreeing but not wanting to argue the point.

"Then what do you think?" Hank pushed Logan as if he were a hesitant student.

"You two are the ones who remember," Logan said.

Hank nodded. "We saw the path we almost went down."

"You stopped it," Logan said. "I was busy drowning."

"It was mostly Charles."

"You always say that," Logan said. "In any universe. It pisses me off."

"People get nervous when the giant blue guy takes too much credit," Hank said.

"But you choose to be the big blue guy." Logan stared intensely at Hank as if soaking in the enormity of his blueness.

Hank started to ask what Logan meant, but he remembered 1973. "The serum. I had to stop taking it. My intellect is part of my mutation, and the serum made it harder and harder for me to think clearly. I realized I had a choice between looking normal and developing my research."

Logan nodded, growling a little.

"I'm learning to appreciate it," Hank said. "One of my grad students just figured out that my second-stage mutation slows my aging. I have the telomeres of a thirty-year-old."

"Congratulations," Logan said.

"That means I'm aging at about a quarter the rate of a normal human." Hank hoped he wasn't being condescending or pedantic, because this felt more like a confession of facts he'd kept to himself. To anyone else, they'd sound like bragging, but Logan was the one person Hank knew who would outlive him no matter what. "I'll be around well into my third century as long as no one impales me in my sleep."

Logan's mouth thinned to a grim line.

"Too soon for that joke?"

"It'll always be too soon for that joke," Logan said. He stared off toward the television. Hank let him brood.

When Logan spoke, he almost startled Hank. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again. Sharing one more beer with you would've been enough. To think I might get 200 more years – well, it's a lot of beer."

"As many as you want," Hank said.

"Creating the future where I have you back, it's more real than saving the world." Logan picked at his beer label. "That's terrible, isn't it?"

"It's easier to relate to a single death than millions," Hank said. "It's how we're wired."

"I lost a lot of people I loved, though. Jean, Marie –"

"Loved?" Hank interrupted.

"Not like that," Logan said. "You know what I mean."

"You just compared me to Jean and Marie and said having me back means more than them," Hank said. "What am I supposed to take from that?"

"Not what you seem to be."

"Forget it, then," Hank said. He wished he could imitate the flat, even tone that Charles used when he was manipulating people psychically, but Hank’s heart got in the way. He sounded aggressive and menacing, when all he wanted was to keep his friendship. To keep things from changing between himself and Logan.

"I don't want to forget anything else," Logan said. "Especially not about you."

"Then remember me somewhere else." Hank felt a feral roar in his chest but fought to keep his voice calm. "I can't quite look at you right now."

Logan finished his beer in a few bitter gulps and left, silenced.

*

Hank spent the next few days on the verge of picking up the phone. He'd done the cruelest possible thing to Logan: reappeared in his life, then sent him away. But Hank's emotions were too fraught and burdensome for him to assemble a quick apology. They couldn't be friends, not after what Logan had admitted. The problem with getting an education was that truths were difficult to unlearn.

He wanted to love Logan back. Physically, he was sure he could; Logan's beauty was the kind that transcended sexual orientation, and Hank had daydreamed about him a few times over the decades. The problem, as usual, was tangled up in Hank’s head. He'd cared for the Logan he remembered, but never in an intimate way. And that man was gone forever, swallowed in the full-circle resolution of a necessary temporal paradox. The new Logan might have been hiding forty years of betrayals and deceptions, or he might have been the love of Hank's life. With those years erased, Hank and Logan had become strangers.

They weren't even starting over. This was a beginning, and Hank was acting foolishly instead of enjoying it. "Do you have a few minutes to drop by tonight?" Hank asked when Logan answered the phone.

"Yeah," Logan said and hung up. At least he didn’t sound angry.

Well past nine in the evening, Logan showed up at Hank's door with a bouquet of flowers from the bodega down the street and a bottle of small-batch Canadian whisky that looked like it had been gathering dust under his bed for a decade. The flowers weren't anything fancy, just yellow Gerbera daisies and reddish-orange tulips, but they were cheerful, and they sent the right message. Hank found a vase to put them in.

Logan brandished the whisky bottle. "I wasn't sure how drunk we'd have to get for this conversation."

"Which conversation?"

"The one you're going to insist on having," Logan said.

Hank looked over at the flowers. Logan had always been better at actions than words. "I was thinking we could skip it and go right to the bedroom," Hank said bravely.

Logan stared at Hank, frowning, as if searching for evidence that Hank was being impersonated by Mystique.

"We had most of the conversation the other day, didn't we?" Hank said. "We hit on most of the important points."

"You always had girlfriends," Logan said, skipping to the part of the conversation they hadn't had yet. "You had a _wife._ "

"Maybe I did where you come from," Hank said. "I've been with women who fetishized me or pitied me."

"I don't do any of that," Logan said.

"I know."

Logan finally touched Hank: first his hands, then his face. "I always did like you better in blue."

"Nonsense," Hank said.

Logan kissed him. "Believe it."

"It's not that –"

"Believe it or I'll cut your face open." Logan grazed Hank's cheek with his fingernails, claws drawn safely back into his hands.

"Save your empty threats for someone who doesn't know you," Hank said, letting the end of the sentence fade into another kiss.

*

Mystique left a message on Hank’s voicemail from a restricted number, knowing he’d screen it. That was how she operated when she blew through town. She always picked a time when he’d have no excuse to stand her up. His course schedule was online, so this didn’t even count as espionage.

She liked to arrive late to make sure he got there first. He was recognizable from a block away; she usually disguised herself as an unassuming stranger. Today, however, she sat down at their diner booth wearing the everyday look he’d first seen her in, build and features similar to her true form, but blonde-haired and apple-cheeked. She looked like she hadn’t aged. Perhaps, like Logan, she hadn’t. Hank suspected that her mutation made her cells constantly regenerate and rejuvenate. He’d never know, though, at least not while she was alive. Some years ago, he’d persuaded her to give him a blood sample in case of emergency, but she’d made him promise not to study it. She knew him well enough to recognize that, as curious as he was by nature, he was even more honorable.

She ordered fries and a chocolate milkshake. She would dip the fries into the shake and ridicule him for not wanting any, wiggling a chocolate-soaked spud in his face. He’d bite emphatically into his cheeseburger, letting the ketchup run down his chin. They had their comedy routine down, no matter how many months or years they went without practicing.

“Hank,” she said, like he was supposed to intuit the rest of her sentence. Sometimes he worried that she had him confused with Charles.

“You found me,” he said.

“There’s something in the air, Hank.”

“I thought they were blaming that smell on a candy factory in New Jersey,” Hank said.

“Ha, ha. Not here. In Washington.” She leaned forward on her elbows.

“Who are you impersonating now?”

“Various people,” she said. “I jump around so no one catches on. But I’m in the room.”

“So there’s something in the air in the room,” he said.

“They’re afraid of superheroes,” Mystique said.

Hank mimed a glance at his watch. “Must be Tuesday.”

“Not Mutants,” she snapped. “Well, of course, Mutants, they’re always afraid of us, but the language is shifting. _Costumed vigilante justice. Unregulated street combat._ ”

“I guess that _is_ new,” Hank said. “For once, you and I aren’t the ones they’re after.”

“Oh, they’ll find a way to pull us in.” Mystique swirled an angry french fry in the melted remains of her shake.

“The Federal government will redefine blue as a costume? Better warn the Mets.”

“The Mets are nobody’s superheroes.” Mystique laughed a little. Hank was pleased to have cracked her.

“Even after that World Series run?” Hank said.

She nibbled a fry and glared. She’d never had much patience for sports.

“I’ll keep my ears open if you want me to,” Hank said. “But you know I prefer to keep my nose out of politics.” _In this universe, anyway,_ he added mentally.

Mystique slowly sucked a glob of milkshake off a fry, cocking her head to the side. In her natural form, she would have looked like a psychedelic bird. Painted beige and blonde, she looked like a mannequin born in the uncanny valley. “There’s something you’re not telling me, Hank.”

He filled his mouth with cheeseburger, hoping he’d chew long enough to kill the question in the air. But Mystique waited him out. “It’s personal,” he said.

She leaned back in her chair, eyes heavy – sad and shut out. “If that’s how you feel.”

“All I meant is, it has nothing to do with Mutants’ rights.”

“If you have a new lover, it will always be about Mutants’ rights,” Mystique said. “And don’t tell me I’m off the mark, because ‘it’s personal’ always means ‘it’s about my love life.’” She imitated his voice; it was like hearing himself on an answering machine tape. “So who is it? Did you get lucky with that grad student, the one with the boobs and the tacky wind powers?”

Hank rolled his eyes.

“You think she wouldn’t?”

“I think I wouldn’t lose my job,” he said.

“And besides, you’re in love with someone else.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Hank said. “But the potential is there.”

“You’re going to make me guess who it is?” She blinked, and her eyes were her own, gold with cat pupils. An old psychological trick of hers, but Hank wasn’t having it.

“I’m going to ask you to stop trying,” Hank said. “You’ll judge me for it, positively or negatively, and I’m not in the mood.”

She started to say something but stopped in mid-breath. “I _will_ judge you,” she said. “It’s how I show I care.”

“Charles will know soon enough, if he doesn’t already,” Hank said. “I’m sure you owe him a phone call. Tell him I wouldn’t tell you myself. Whine a little.”

“See,” she said. “I’m not the only manipulative one in this friendship.”

*

Hank taught one class in advanced-placement biology at the Xavier Institute. He took the Metro North train up to Westchester two days a week and stayed for lunch. Hank didn't really care for teaching high school, but his quitting would have broken Charles's heart.

The old mansion chilled Hank with memories every time he stepped inside. He suspected their force came from stray psychic energy, not just the strength of his own emotions. Charles periodically urged Hank to move back in, ever since Hank had gotten his East Village apartment, back in the '70s when the neighborhood's veins had flowed with more heroin than blood, and half of Hank's neighbors had mistaken him for a hallucination. His building had gone co-op when Giuliani and Spider-Man had cleaned up the streets in the late '90s, and he'd bought in. Hank hoped this apartment would survive as long as he did.

The suburbs didn't seem to suit Logan any better than they suited Hank, but Logan – the Logan Hank had known, the one who didn't exist anymore – had made the Xavier mansion his home base for over a decade. He didn't seem to care where he lay his head. He cared that Hank was on campus today, though, and detoured Hank to a kiss in the faculty restroom. "You couldn't take an earlier train?"

"There's not usually much reason for me to get here earlier," Hank said.

"Free breakfast," Logan said.

"Bagel, coffee, and the _Times_ on the train," Hank countered. "And for some reason, no one ever sits next to me."

Logan studied him. "The Hank I knew was never this jaded. And you liked it here in Westchester. What the hell happened to you?"

"I got a life outside all of this," Hank said. "I decided to be a scientist, not a superhero, and it was the right decision. But there are a number of people here who disagree and won't let it go."

"Charles?" Logan guessed.

"No. He understands. What with the mind-reading and the fifty years of friendship. But a lot of the others think I'm crossing a line, doing research on Mutants at a public university. They're worried my work will be used against them."

"There _is_ a history of that," Logan said.

"And that's why I need to work within the system." Hank had made this speech countless times, usually to audiences far less perceptive than Logan. "I remind everyone that most Mutants want to disappear into the social order, not overthrow it."

"I was wrong," Logan said. "You're the same self-righteous ass in any universe." His kisses felt furtive and exciting with their students a few footsteps away. It would have been fun to make love for the first time here, with his back against the stall door, but the second-period bell was already ringing.

"I can stay for about an hour after lunch," Hank said.

"You hate Westchester that much?"

"No, but I teach a 4 PM seminar at the college, so I'm screwed if I don't take the 2:15 back to the city."

"Maybe I'll ride back with you," Logan said. "I can take a walk around while you teach. The Sentinels pretty much leveled the New York I remember."

"I'd like that," Hank said.

They tumbled out of the faculty bathroom to find Jean waiting for the toilet. "Really?" Jean said incredulously.

"Yeah, really." Logan winked. Whatever had happened between him and Jean in his reality, he obviously wasn’t over it.

“Hank, can I talk to you for a minute?” Jean asked, although it wasn’t a multiple-choice question.

“I have a class to teach in a few minutes,” Hank said. “Can we talk afterward?” He began making plans to become scarce before the conversation could occur. Logan had bolted away at the first sign of confrontation.

“That didn’t seem to bother you a few minutes ago when you were making out in the bathroom,” Jean said.

“We were watching the time,” Hank said. “And we were far from the eyes of any impressionable teenagers, although I’m sure we weren’t doing anything they haven’t tried themselves by now.”

“Remember what we agreed, Hank,” she said. “About your role with the students. About setting a good example.”

“Please reassure me that we’d still be having this conversation if I’d been in there with a woman,” Hank said.

Jean sighed at him. 

“I’m sorry,” Hank said. “I know you’re better than that. It’s just that, I’ve been behaving myself for years, Jean. And staying away, because heaven forbid I should corrupt anyone with a stray opinion. If one class per semester is too much for you now, just say the word and I’ll cut my ties. Charles won’t like it, but I’m sure he’ll understand that banishing me from the mansion is for the greater good of the X-Men.”

“That’s never been what any of us want, Hank. Least of all me. It’s just better for everyone if you’re not -” She paused, grasping for a word.

“If I’m not myself,” Hank provided, knowing it wasn’t the word she wanted.

“No.” She’d grown tense and red-faced. It was childish, but Hank enjoyed watching her struggle to keep from blowing up at him. She said, “I just don’t want them to believe they can live the way you live. Safely, without support.”

“Some of them can,” Hank said. “And some of them would be better off.”

“Would that it were true,” Jean said. She looked like she had more to add, but instead, she said, “I’ve kept you long enough. Go to class.”

“Wouldn’t want to be a bad role model,” Hank said.

After he taught, Hank joined Charles in the dining hall. Charles had transformed from disheveled youth to middle-aged respectability the instant his hairline had receded too far to hide, and he'd scarcely changed since, although Hank knew from their conversations that Charles had begun to feel his years. Unlike Hank, he had no healing factor, no mutations preserving his youth.

"Well, you and Logan," Charles said as he shifted his hoverchair into park, and Hank sat down. "That's an unexpected consequence of time travel."

"You could have pretended to wait for me to tell you myself," Hank said.

"I didn't get it from your thoughts," Charles said. "There are hundreds of minds to read in this house, and yours is one of the ones I'm least concerned about. Jean told me. She demanded that I remind you of appropriate faculty decorum during classroom hours. I explained that I'd get right on that as soon as she and Scott showed some interest in obeying the policy, and besides, any lecture directed at you and Logan is guaranteed to have the opposite of the intended effect."

"I'm glad you approve," Hank said.

"You're in a good mood," Charles said. "You aren't often."

"That's because you only see me when I'm here, Charles."

"You think I can't tell the difference between passing discontent and profound spiritual restlessness?"

"I wouldn't dare insult you," Hank said. "But I'm fine. I'm always fine."

"No," Charles said. "You see something on the horizon now. Don't pretend it's not a change, Hank. Don't pretend it's not important."

Charles was right, so Hank got defensive. "Don't talk down to me like I'm one of your students."

"Sorry. Old habits."

"You know," Hank said, "I might have been a happier man in the terrible future we avoided."

"The one where you were stabbed through the heart in your sleep?"

"Up until then," Hank said. "I was married."

"To Logan?"

"I don't think so. Pretty sure it was a woman."

"I suppose it's one of the paradoxes of time travel," Charles said. "A timeline that's an absolute disaster for the world as a whole might be paradise for a single individual."

"I don't think it was _paradise,_ " Hank said. "I think I was happy."

"Happiness is important, Hank. Don't underrate it."

Hank shrugged. "It's hard to miss what you've never had."

*

As promised, Logan took the train back to the city with Hank. They parted ways at Grand Central so Hank could teach his seminar and Logan could stand in the middle of Lexington Avenue and breathe in cab fumes, or wander Bryant Park gnawing a cigar, or whatever a man like Logan did in a large urban center when he had a couple of hours to kill. They met up again after Hank's class in a hole-in-the-wall sushi place near Hunter College. "Rainbow rolls," Logan said, prodding a slice with his chopsticks. "One of the great inventions of the twentieth century."

"I'm a fan of penicillin and the alternating electrical current," Hank said.

"Right, but once you have those squared away, might as well use 'em to cut up raw fish and drown it in spicy mayo."

"Is this when you tell me how much better they are in Japan?" Hank said.

"The Japanese wouldn't touch this stuff. This is pure American ingenuity." Logan sounded simultaneously proud of both cultures.

"So you're not going to fuck off to Tokyo tomorrow and break my heart because you miss the food?"

"Would it?" Logan said. "Break your heart?"

Hank gave the question real thought before replying, "I don't know yet."

"Someone'll get hurt one way or another." Logan was the kind of man who could sip green tea and make it look like whiskey.

"Spare me the lecture on how fragile the heart is," Hank said. "I got a better one from Charles at lunch."

"I guess we've both survived worse."

"Physically and mentally," Hank said.

Logan was chewing. Spicy food turned his cheeks adorably red. As he swallowed, he said, "Sooner or later, even if we treat each other like china dolls, we're going to tear each other up. My claws come out when I come. And I'm guessing you're a biter."

"I try not to be," Hank said.

"Stop trying," said Logan.

"But if something does happen –"

"Yell out 'Avengers Assemble' if I hurt you."

"There's a good chance Thor will show up if we use that safe word," Hank said.

"Can you imagine the look on his face?" Logan grinned wickedly.

"And if you can't speak because I'm crushing your windpipe, stab me in the posterior," Hank said.

"Done."

The restaurant's servers had been staring at the two of them since they'd walked in. There were enough other customers to drown out what had been a hushed and cautious discussion of kinky sex, so the other patrons were probably just gawking at the two famous Mutant superheroes eating their mundane dinner. Logan seemed as accustomed to it as Hank was. In a way, it was better that Hank was a public figure: people knew why a hairy blue monster in a three-piece suit was eating sushi in East Midtown. Otherwise, he'd just be a random freak.

The subway home was packed and sweaty. "What are you so happy about?" Hank asked Logan. He felt equally prepared for an X-rated response or for one that had nothing to do with him.

"There are so many people out tonight," Logan said. "I'd gotten used to everyone being afraid."

"It must feel like a dream," Hank said.

"I've prevented a lot of bad things from happening over the years, but this time I really feel like I saved the world."

"It's the perfect scenario, too," Hank said. "Nobody knows you did anything. No picture on the front page of the _Bugle_ if they realize what you did, no calling Charles from jail if someone thinks you were on the wrong side of the law. You just get to walk around knowing these people lived because you got a girl to put down a gun."

Logan grinned at a woman who'd been peering over her phone to listen to their conversation. She almost jumped out of her seat before looking down to text frantically. Logan's smile resembled a fan of knives. "How is Mystique, anyway?"

"Oh, the usual," Hank said, his mind returning to her recent visit. Maybe it wasn't safe to have this conversation on a crowded 4 train. "She comes and goes."

"But no epic career of supervillainy?"

"She has her own moral compass," Hank said. "Most of the time, she tries not to hurt anybody. I'm sure she's off impersonating someone important; it's her favorite hobby."

The woman with the phone was really listening now. Hank scrambled to come up with some scandalous false gossip to spread about Tony Stark, but he couldn't think of much that wasn't already true. Besides, he felt overcome with the excitement of being about to have sex. A gesture as simple as holding Logan's hand would attract attention, so he had to hold in all his desire and anticipation.

The subway finally reached Hank’s stop. He and Logan barely restrained themselves until they reached Hank’s apartment. Hank slammed the door shut behind them and pinned Logan against the door to kiss him. Hank had been playing this encounter in his head all day, hoping it would feel like this. So much of his life was improvisation that he reveled in the moments that went according to plan.

Hank slid his hand between Logan’s legs to show that was where he wanted to be. Logan, half hard, jerked forward at Hank’s touch. Hank fumbled with Logan’s belt, which had a complicated buckle, giving Logan enough slack to wrestle his arms free from Hank’s bulk. Logan yanked Hank’s shirttails out of the waistband of his pants. He tried to shove his hand up the back of Hank’s shirt but growled in frustration. “How am I supposed to tear you out of your clothes when you’re wearing a vest over suspenders?”

“It’s hard to find a belt that fits me,” Hank said, knowing it wasn’t a useful answer, backing away to take off the offending accessories himself, plus his tie. Logan snapped off his belt and shrugged out of his jacket, revealing a white t-shirt that conformed so tightly to his chest that it was translucent. Had he taught class in that outfit? Would anyone have dared to stop him?

He’d planned it, Hank realized. He wanted Hank to rip it off of him, the damned show-off. With furious glee, Hank bared his claws and slashed the shirt in half. Blood beaded briefly on Logan’s chest before he healed.

“Don’t do that to mine,” Hank said, instinctively crossing his arms over his shirt. “All my clothes have to be custom tailored. They cost a fortune.”

With emphatic gingerliness, Logan undid Hank’s shirt buttons one by one. He put his rough hands on Hank’s chest and kissed him deeply. He stroked Hank’s cock through his pants, making Hank almost jump out of his skin at the sensation.

This was as far as they’d gotten the other night. Sex with men was so much less straightforward than with women. “What do you want to do?” Hank said.

“Fuck,” Logan said. Their lips brushed as he spoke.

“Specifically.”

Logan pressed his forehead hard against Hank’s. “What do you want, a lesson plan?”

“A hint would be nice.”

“Go down on me,” Logan said. “In the bedroom.” Logan traced a line across Hank’s knuckles with one finger. “Don’t wanna ruin your couch.”

“You’ll ruin my mattress instead?”

“I can hold ‘em in,” Logan said. “I last longer when I do.”

Hank hesitated. Logan, with the fast twitch of a fighter’s reflexes, pushed him up hard against a bookshelf. Hank was not accustomed to arms strong enough to hinder his movement, and he didn’t know what to do next except stand still.

“Hank, what are you afraid of?”

“Nothing,” Hank said quickly. “Heights, a little.”

Logan squinted at him, still holding him in place. That should have been enough to intimidate most people. “Fear is an emotion I’ve seen a lot of,” Logan said. “I know what it looks like.”

“I’m not afraid of _you,_ ” Hank said. “Or of sex, or –”

Logan was not going to let Hank move until he figured it out, so Hank concentrated his considerable brain power on finding the words. “I’m afraid you’ll see my body and change your mind.”

“So take your clothes off, and we can get that fear out of the way.” Logan released Hank and took his own pants off. Not that Logan, his perfectly sculpted eight-pack, and his round little tush had anything to worry about. Reluctantly, self-consciously, Hank took off the rest of his clothes. Logan did a double-take, but not the one Hank had expected. “Whoa, that’s even more than I was expecting.”

The old joke spilled out effortlessly. “Well, you know what they say about men with big feet.”

“You were honestly worried I’d think your cock was too big?”

“To you, it’s a monster cock; to me, it’s a monster’s cock,” Hank said. “And that goes for the rest of me, too.”

“I don’t see you like you see yourself,” Logan said.

“Keep reminding me,” Hank said. “Eventually the message will get through.”

Logan did what he really needed to do, which was stop talking and touch Hank. Hank’s anxieties were keeping him from staying hard, and Logan seemed determined to combat the problem with his bare hands. He spit into his palm and stroked Hank’s cock until Hank’s body succumbed to arousal. To belief. Hank tried to catch Logan’s mouth in a kiss, but Logan held him back, forcing space between them. It took a moment for Hank to figure out that Logan was ensuring he could look at Hank, could admire him. That Logan had wondered for decades what Hank looked like naked and now, finally given the opportunity, liked what he saw.

Still, Hank wished he were getting more than a hand job. He realized it would be an exceptional one, but he’d received too many pity jerk-offs from would-be lovers who couldn’t take him after all. He’d explain that to Logan, but later. “Let’s go to bed,” he said instead. He cinched his arms around Logan’s waist and carried him into the bedroom. For all Logan’s granite solidity and adamantium-reinforced skeleton, he was as light as any person. Hank could have tossed him into the air like pizza dough.

Logan didn’t resist when Hank threw him down on the bed. In fact, Logan wore his famous feral smile as Hank cuffed his hands sturdily around Logan’s wrists. Logan’s meanest smile meant he was happiest. Hank went at him with lips and tongue, biting and bruising, breaking Logan’s skin to watch the quick miracle of Logan’s healing factor. Logan growled at the pain, but when Hank met his eyes, the expression of fierce delight had only intensified. Logan clearly wanted sharp canines dug into his chest, claws piercing his forearms. Hank could give him that.

What Hank wanted was to suck Logan’s cock. He’d been fantasizing about it for days, about tasting him, about making Logan’s deep-seated apocalyptic troubles disappear into pleasure. But when Hank lowered his mouth onto Logan’s cock, Logan barked, “Hank! Warn me.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t want to put holes in your mattress,” Logan reminded him.

“Fair enough,” Hank said. They would have to do this every time – their version of safe sex. “I’m going to give you a blow job, unless you don’t want one.”

“Oh, I want one,” Logan said. “It’s been a long time.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“I spent the last ten years trying to keep the world from ending,” Logan said. “Sex isn’t _actually_ what you do when you’re pretty sure you’re going to die in the morning.”

“Well, you saved the world,” Hank said. “So now you have time.” Hank wanted to kiss Logan’s eyelids, to calm him, but his face was too far away to maintain the moment. So Hank kissed him at the hollows that his abs sculpted into his hips. “Easy now,” Hank said. This time, when Hank tongued Logan’s cock, Logan didn’t stop him. Hank was far from certain of what he was doing, but he was good at extrapolating on the fly. Logan’s sighs of satisfaction came from deep in his chest, like a cat’s.

Pausing for air, Hank saw that Logan was clenching his fists hard enough to turn the knuckles white, fighting the claws. The strain didn’t appear to be doing him much good. Hank kneaded Logan’s skin where his back met his butt. “Mm,” Logan said. “That helps.”

Hank saw the pattern now, the strategy. He went back and forth between Logan’s cock, stroking hard and fast with his tongue and lips, and caressing Logan’s sides gently. Logan was wearing him out, but happily. When Logan came in Hank’s mouth, it seemed to surprise them both equally, like Hank had thrown off Logan’s sense of his own geography.

Hank rested his head on Logan’s thigh, just wanting to cling to a random chunk of Logan for a minute. “How do you manage to masturbate?” he asked, mostly to see if Logan had fallen asleep.

“Much easier,” Logan said. “No surprises.” He sat up, and Hank rolled in time to avoid a knee in the jowl. “Same with women, usually. This is much more exciting.”

“Glad you had fun,” Hank said.

“Now, how ‘bout you have some?” Logan said, suddenly in Hank’s lap, kissing him.

Hank had a thousand protests in his head and a thousand more instructions, but they jammed up against each other to prevent him from getting any out. He forced himself to keep his mouth shut and let Logan give it a shot. To solve the problems that actually arose, when they arose, instead of trying to forestall everything he could imagine. He willed himself to relax, but that alone wasn’t working.

Hank took off his glasses and placed them on the nightstand. “I can’t micromanage what I can’t see,” he said, and Logan laughed as he shoved Hank onto his back.

Hank was pretty sure he’d never received a good blow job. His few encounters before his secondary transformation had been fumbling messes of overactive gag reflexes, and the ones during his serum days got lost in a haze of marijuana and self-loathing. He’d heard good things, but seventy years of experience had taught him not to mistake others’ anecdotes for data.

Hank couldn't see anyway, so he closed his eyes and forced himself to trust Logan. He felt Logan's callused palm first, bracing and stroking the shaft of his cock. Logan's lips only on the tip of his cock, ticklish, not enough pressure. But nice, as he adjusted to the sensation. Logan wasn't the sort to settle for nice, though, and Hank wasn't surprised to hear him grunt and back off, rethinking. Logan returned, licking up and around Hank's cock in rough spirals, as if cleaning the drips from a melting ice cream cone. A rumble of pleasure rose in Hank's throat. “That,” Hank gasped. “Do that more.”

Logan kept going. Hank stopped trying to pick apart what he was doing. His nerves lit up; his brain shut down. That was the scary part. It didn't matter. He was going to come; he wanted to come; he did.

Hank put his glasses on in time to catch Logan wiping his face with a dirty towel from the hamper. “Nice shot,” Logan said. “Right between the eyes.”

“You'll heal,” Hank said.

“Want to keep working on it 'til your aim improves?” Logan turned around; he was already hard again. That healing factor was really something.

“Let me get you a clean towel,” Hank said. “This might take a while.”

*

Hank was spending the night in Westchester. His official excuse was his morning AP Biology class, but he’d been refusing Charles's offer of a guest room for decades. With Logan in the picture, however, Hank’s motivation to stay over had skyrocketed, not only for the pleasure of Logan’s company but to avoid his instinct to insist that they conduct their entire relationship at his apartment. Hank knew Logan didn’t view nights in Manhattan as a burden, but he felt guilty that Logan didn’t mind.

Kitty caught up with him in the hallway after dinner. He'd forgotten about the lull that the school fell into as the students shuffled out of the dining hall toward their homework or evening extracurriculars. It was too early, too obvious, for him to disappear into Logan's bedroom.

“It's nice to see you around here more,” Kitty said, balancing on the line between good will and passive-aggression. Well, liminality was literally her superpower.

Hank would have deflected her with an excuse, but she wasn't a child. And even as a child, she'd had a low tolerance for bullshit. “Logan's given me a reason to stay the night here before my class.”

She grinned like getting him to admit it quickly was a special accomplishment. “You two are remarkably quiet for a new couple.”

“We save the noise for where the walls are thicker,” Hank said. “You haven't been spying, have you?”

“It'd be like watching my dads go at it. Believe me, I stay far away.”

“Happy to hear you're not using your powers to fuel the gossip mill,” Hank said.

“I've been here too long to hear anything new,” Kitty said. “And long enough to be tired of other people lurking around, trying to be the first to find out if Piotr and I are engaged yet.”

Hank patted her arm affectionately. “Sounds like you're doing fine.”

“Some days I am,” she said. “Other days, I wish I'd taken your advice and spent some time away from Westchester after college.”

“I thought Chicago was freezing, you didn't have any friends, your parents were driving you crazy, and you couldn't wait to come back to New York,” Hank said. Kitty had faithfully sent him emails to this effect for most of her four years at the University of Chicago.

Kitty shrugged. “Maybe I'm a restless soul.”

“Well, if you ever decide you want a master's degree, you know there's room for you in my lab.”

“In genetics?” She made a face that would have offended Hank if he weren't so fond of her.

“You'll have a long time to change your mind,” Hank said, pleased to find an opportunity to steer the conversation in a more substantial direction.

Kitty bounced on her toes. “The test results came through?”

“I have to run some verifications before they're publishable,” Hank said. “But yes, it appears that your phase-shifting abilities affect your interaction with the fourth dimension. You're not aging at a consistent rate, and the average is much slower than normal, by a factor of about four and a half.”

She didn't seem to have trouble doing the math, only processing the implications. “So I'm going to live for four hundred years?”

“Only if you stay out of trouble,” Hank said.

“It's funny,” Kitty said. “I'm not actually sure I want to live that long. I mean, I'll pass people by, won't I?”

“You will, and sooner than you think.”

She didn't miss a beat. “You have Logan, though, at least.”

“For however long this lasts,” Hank said.

She narrowed her eyes. “You're not sure it will?”

“I guess I've been around too long to believe anything will last forever,” Hank said. “But I'm hopeful.”

“You're really determined not to let me have my romantic illusions,” Kitty said. “I want to believe you were secretly in love with each other all these years and finally had the courage to admit it. But courage has never been Logan's problem, and resigning yourself to failure has never been yours.”

“Nope. He brought me flowers three weeks after the time paradox looped around.”

“Okay, faith in romance restored,” she said.

“This is _not_ permission to exploit time travel to improve your love life,” Hank teased.

“My love life is wonderful, thanks,” Kitty said with a laugh. “I thought Piotr and I would outgrow each other while I was gone, but instead, I feel like we've grown into each other.”

“Now you're restoring _my_ faith in romance,” Hank said.

“I wish the INS felt the same way.”

“Piotr? Is he having trouble?” Hank hadn't heard anything, but Mutant immigration issues were a chronic condition for some people. Charles had been a dual citizen from birth, and Logan had become naturalized as an American before Hank had been born. The younger generation, constrained by stricter laws, hadn't enjoyed the same opportunities.

“The usual senators are grumbling about dangerous foreign Mutants again. Piotr's been waiting longer than normal for his work visa renewal. It always goes through in the end, though.”

“Let me know if he could use a letter from me,” Hank said.

“Thanks. It means a lot.” Kitty looked at her feet as if settling her shaken resolve. “Mutants face some bigotry here, but it's nothing like Russia. A guy with his abilities wouldn't be safe there.”

“The US government used to let Mutants in his situation apply for asylum,” Hank said. “But they reversed that policy after 9/11. Now, the philosophy is, enhanced strength means you can fend for yourself.”

“Yeah,” Kitty said. “In prison.”

“I can't imagine Charles will let Piotr get deported, and as I said, if I can help by vouching for him -”

“I know. Of course. I -” Kitty visibly collected herself, righting her posture and forcing a smile. “I just can't keep myself from imagining everything that could go wrong.”

“We're not being stalked by murderous robots,” Hank said. “Logan would remind us to count our blessings.”

Kitty looked at him oddly - past him, really, as if overcome by a flash of memory. “Or he’d remind us not to get too complacent.”

“No, that’s the old Logan,” Hank said. “The new one is irritatingly optimistic.”

“And you adore it, don’t you?” Kitty kissed his cheek. “Don’t mess it up.” 

She sidled away from him, down the hallway, and he didn’t follow her. She probably had duties, supervising one of the evening extracurriculars. Hank strolled in the other direction, looking for a place to unobtrusively kill time. He saw a television glow leaking from one of the classrooms and peered inside the half-open door. Ten students sat in clusters of desks while a Netflix menu blazed on the projection screen. Bobby Drake hunched over the A.V. console, but he brightened when he saw Hank. “Would you believe none of them have seen _Monty Python and the Holy Grail?”_

“Well, it was made before they were born,” Hank said. “Maybe even before some of their parents were.”

“You didn’t accept that as an excuse for me, either,” Bobby said.

Bobby got the movie to load, and Hank took a seat in the back. A few minutes into the movie, latecomers began to sneak in, probably lured by laughter. One of them shocked Hank by sitting next to him, but the shock dissipated when Hank realized it was Logan. “You want to watch the rest of the movie, or you want to skip the date and go back to my place?”

“Let’s go,” Hank said. “I’ve seen this one.”

“Do you like living here?” Hank asked as he hung tomorrow’s suit in Logan’s mostly empty closet.

“It’s nice to have a place to lay my head,” Logan said. “I’ve spent a lot of my life not living anywhere in particular.”

Logan sometimes threw Hank these glimpses of a life story long and intricate beyond Hank’s imagining, a narrative not withheld but so rich with detail that it would take Hank decades to spin it all out of him. Part of Hank would have been content to live in Logan’s arms, soothed by the sound of his voice, collecting data on an alternate past. Fortunately, Logan was great at taking his clothes off as soon as Hank turned his back. The sight of Logan’s tight pecs and vein-rippled biceps made it impossible for Hank to proceed with his historical research.

Logan was getting better at taking Hank out of his clothes. Hank loved to watch the precision of Logan’s small movements, flicking each button, nudging Hank’s shoulders and lifting his arms just so, freeing Hank’s body without damaging a stitch. Hank found pleasure in being touched and manipulated. Logan was the only lover he’d had who didn’t shy away from that.

Hank waited until Logan was kneeling in front of his zipper to say, “I have a present for you.” The gift had been the product of sudden inspiration during a dispiriting Rangers playoff game. Hank had carried it in his briefcase all day, feeling secretive and filthy as he’d delivered a lecture and held office hours.

Logan shook his present out of the plastic drugstore bag Hank had stuffed it into on his way out the door. Logan held the twin pieces of fabric up quizzically, not identifying them as gloves. Granted, they didn’t really look like gloves. Hank had designed them to loop around Logan’s fingers but leave his palms and fingertips free, secured with another strap around each wrist. More importantly, a strip of fabric would stretch across Logan’s knuckles at the burst points of his claws. The material was an advanced polymer often used in superhero costumes, not quite strong enough to withstand adamantium but tough enough to catch Logan’s claws and slow them so he could retract them before they broke his skin. Hank helped Logan put the gloves on, then watched proudly as Logan tested them. Logan winced as he pushed out his claws, the points visibly straining the gloves but only emerging about an inch from Logan’s hand. Logan wiggled his fingers. “Safe sex?”

“Well, safer,” Hank said.

Logan winced again as he retracted his claws and healed around the wounds they’d left. The gloves’ fabric wicked away blood like sweat. Logan ran his hands down Hank’s bare back, his gloves silky and warm against Hank’s skin, and down Hank’s loose pants. Hank had lost a little weight lately - all this athletic sex, maybe - and with his suspenders down, Logan had no trouble pushing them to Hank’s ankles with a flick of his wrist. Hank stepped out of them, taking his boxers off at the same time, no longer self-conscious about feeling exposed.

He pulled Logan close to him, slamming their chests together. They kissed breathlessly, Logan pulling Hank’s head down hard enough to rattle his jaw. Hank raked his fingers down Logan’s sides, making Logan squirm and grind against him. Logan was hard enough that he wouldn’t want to wait. Hank felt less urgency, more desire to let the intensity build. It’d be a good night to bottom, if they could both remember to keep the noise down. “Think you can fuck me quietly?” Hank said.

“Not with pants on,” Logan said. 

Hank unbuckled Logan’s belt smoothly and yanked it out of the loops. If they’d been at Hank’s apartment, Hank might have used it to raise a few welts on Logan’s ass, to watch Logan moan while his healing factor flooded his brain with pleasure, but he knew Logan couldn’t do _that_ quietly. Instead, Hank tossed the belt away and teased Logan through his pants for a few moments before zipping him free. Logan’s ability to walk around the X-Mansion without underwear never ceased to amaze Hank.

Logan kissed Hank affectionately, one hand on Hank’s cheek. Hank would have to get used to the gloves’ smoothness, to the way they conducted body heat. “Better lie down if you want to get fucked,” Logan said.

Hank’s weight made the bed creak invitingly. Logan wrapped his arms around Hank’s waist and pulled him up to his hands and knees. Being fucked from behind should have felt impersonal, but to Hank it had always seemed intimate, ceding control to a lover whom he couldn’t see. Logan steadied himself with his hands on Hank’s hips. If his claws came out, he’d shred Hank down both sides, but Hank trusted his own invention.

Logan freed one hand to guide his cock inside Hank. Hank’s Mutant agility extended to unexpected muscles, and he yielded easily to Logan’s cock. Hank shifted as Logan drove deeper into him, making sure he got the strongest bursts of pleasure, tensing and releasing so Logan could feel him tight and warm, get all that friction. Hank indulged his instinct to push out, knowing it would draw Logan in thicker and deeper.

Logan, keeping quiet, came before Hank expected him to, with a low growl and a searing thrust. Hank eased down off his knees and onto his side with Logan still inside him, holding him. Hank took one of Logan’s hands and guided it to his own cock. “Oh, you have a ways to go,” Logan whispered.

“Yep.”

“I want to look at it,” Logan said. “I want to watch you.”

“Watch me… beat off?”

“Not the most poetic way of putting it,” Logan said.

“Not the most poetic thing to do in bed.”

“You don’t want to.” Logan kissed Hank’s neck. “Another time.”

“I’m happy to,” Hank said. “I’m stunned it’s what you want.”

Logan didn’t speak. He pressed his lips into the back of Hank’s neck again.

“You’re not used to having what you want,” Hank said.

“Not without force.” Hank felt Logan shrug, his chest brushing Hank’s back. “I’m used to not wanting much.”

The stark tragedy of that statement made Hank want to satisfy him. “Okay. Pull out of me so I can roll over. I don’t promise not to laugh.”

“Please laugh,” Logan said as they shifted positions.

“People say I’m scary when I laugh.”

“You are.” Hank wasn’t sure what to make of that, but it sounded like a compliment.

Hank slicked his hands with lube and lay on his back, knees bent and apart. He wrapped his hand around his cock and stroked. There was a particular sort of self-consciousness to being observed in an activity he’d done thousands of times in private. He felt as if Logan had asked him to brush his teeth, and while he was at it, could he really _perform_? He closed his eyes, trying to ease into routine.

“You don’t want to look at me?” Without the context of his face, Logan sounded menacing. Hank remembered why Logan intimidated people. Being with Logan was having sex with a deadly weapon that Hank was lucky enough to be immune to. Suddenly, the prospect of staring Logan in the eyes – staring him down – turned Hank on.

“I took my glasses off,” Hank said. “You’re blurry.”

“So put them on,” Logan said. As Hank sat up to feel around on the nightstand for his glasses, Logan put his arms around Hank’s waist and kissed the back of his neck. Hank’s built-up tension eased into Logan’s embrace. “Thanks for giving it a shot,” Logan said.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come through for you,” Hank said. “It’s just, I spend a lot of my life being stared at. Strangers love watching the big blue guy drink coffee, or read a newspaper, or whatever mundane activity is suddenly fascinating when performed by someone who looks like me. And I know you don’t mean it the same way, but -”

“But I do,” Logan said. “You’re different from anyone else, and it keeps you interesting. But you’re exposed all the time. Nowhere to hide.”

“Plus, I’ve had decades to build up all these neuroses, and you’re not going to dismantle them all overnight.”

Logan kissed Hank’s neck again. “So you want something else?”

“I’m fine for now,” Hank said. “You fucked the hell out of me. Let’s relax awhile and pick up again later.”

“I bet we could catch the end of that movie,” Logan said.

“No way. You’d have to stop groping me and put clothes on.”

Logan climbed over Hank to open the nightstand drawer. “Good thing I bought one of these,” he said as he produced a sleek new iPad. “Kind of a ‘welcome to the 21st century’ present to myself. I can’t figure out how to do much with it yet.”

“They’re pretty versatile once you get them configured,” Hank said. “Let me have a look.”

Logan kissed Hank’s cheek. “Glad to have you back in your comfort zone.”

Hank pulled Logan into his lap and set the iPad aside, more interested in kisses than computers.

***

**CHAPTER TWO**

_I’m the new blue blood  
I’m the great white hope_

***

Hank was giving a lecture on natural selection to sixty sleepy undergraduates. It was unseasonably warm outside, and his students sprawled in shorts and tank tops while the lecture hall’s air conditioner churned, almost drowning Hank out. He pushed forward despite their inattention, himself wishing he were on his fire escape with a folding chair, a cold beer, and a bad novel. Or two cold beers and a half-naked Logan. Yeah, that second one.

One of Hank’s least diligent students raised a surprise hand, and Hank called on him, not wanting to deny the student his participation credit. “Professor,” the student said, “I know this is kind of off topic, but there’s something going on in Connecticut. Like, some major … I can’t even tell. But I think maybe, like, we’re going to remember this was where we were when this happened, you know?”

Hank suspected he was being derailed by a spring-semester slacker, but he wasn’t feeling a particularly strong commitment to Biology 201. He switched from PowerPoint to a web browser and found a live stream of local news to play on the lecture hall’s media projector, cranking up the volume to beat the air conditioner's drone. “I can’t even tell” turned out to be an accurate description of the event. A group of young Mutants on a reality show were battling a legitimate but out-of-their-league enemy when something went wrong: an explosion, a school bus, dead children. A square mile of Stamford, CT, up in smoke.

Most crime-fighting Mutants learned about collateral damage early – how to avoid it and how to account for it. Some, like Hank, realized they would never be able to accept the deaths of innocent bystanders, or even to feel certain of their right to take any life. People like Charles and organizations like S.H.I.E.L.D. poured energy and money into preventing this kind of disaster. Tangled up in his grief and shock was an explosive knot of anger that this vigilante team had slipped through the cracks, destroyed a city, and given politicians a new reason to make his life hell.

Hank watched with his students until the news became a loop of unchanging footage and his emotions reached an unnerving, numb equilibrium. He silenced the projection system and announced, “We should talk about this, I think.”

The students sat stunned for a minute, either unsure of what to say or hoping they could get away with not participating. Hank wished he had the luxury of not being called on, either. Finally, a girl named Katie – the one Hank had learned to rely on to raise her hand when nobody else would – spoke up. “What’s going to happen, Dr. McCoy? Like, with Mutants’ rights?”

“I don’t know,” Hank said honestly. “What do you think should happen?” As if they’d admit it if they thought people like him should be locked away for their own good.

A slow, hesitant hand rose from the center of the room. “They’re all dead, right? I mean, the heroes. The people who were trying to be heroes.”

“Were they even Mutants?” someone else piped up, not bothering with the formality of being called on. “Or were they like Iron Man, with suits and stuff?”

“Does it matter?” another student fired back. The room started to get noisy.

Hank raised his voice. It _was_ his classroom. “Okay, there’s a whole bunch of you and only one of me, so I’m going to ask you to raise your hands and let me call on you. In return –” he cleared his throat, and the last hum of side conversations abated – “in return, you are welcome to speak your mind. Don’t worry about offending me. I’ve heard worse.” The students laughed uneasily, like they were desperate for a way to let their emotions out but too cautious for tears or rage. Hands went up.

They were smart, and for the most part, kind. They wanted to know if Mutants and superheroes were regulated, if there were internal methods of sanctioning heroes or if the government would get involved. They wanted Hank to know they were on his side. “You’ll be in the minority there,” Hank said. “Most people don’t have a Mutant for a professor.”

“Maybe they should,” someone shouted from the back.

“Thank you.” Hank felt his cheeks warm. Being blue meant no one could tell when he was blushing.

Katie raised her hand urgently. Most of the other hands had drifted down, so Hank called on her. “Why do so many Mutants want to fight crime, anyway? I’m pretty sure if I had powers, I’d still want to be a doctor, not a superhero.”

Hank chuckled. “You’re asking the guy who quit the X-Men for the tenure track.” He paused for their smattering of laughter. “I think some people feel a sense of duty, that their abilities make them responsible for protecting humanity. Others want attention or fame – it looks like that was a big factor in what happened today. And some people don’t think they’re good for anything else, or they can’t find a way to fit into human society.”

Another hesitant hand. “So why don’t those people join the Army or the police or something?”

“I got my draft notice in 1971,” Hank said. “I’d just finished graduate school and was starting my postdoc, so I had an out, but I thought, what the hell, maybe they can use me. So I showed up. They took one look at me and said, ‘Take your education exemption and go home.’ It’s even more common now that there’s no draft – people call it the WTF clause, when the US Military decides you’re so weird they can’t fit you into their structure. Or too potentially dangerous.

“Other guys went to Vietnam, or they joined up later, only to be sent to special units and exploited or experimented on,” Hank went on. “People would come back permanently disabled sometimes, unable to use their abilities or really mentally unstable. The same as anyone else in a war, I guess, but it’s much scarier when you’re dealing with Mutant powers. The Armed Forces haven’t acted in good faith with us most of the time, so Mutants tend to steer clear.”

A hush fell over the room. Hank’s students respected him – they always said they learned a lot in his class – but they seldom found out much about him as a person. He always felt like there wasn’t much to tell.

No hand, just a shout. “So why don’t they all join the X-Men or S.H.I.E.L.D. or whatever?”

“Those organizations are very selective,” Hank said. “And they require discipline, commitment, and sacrifice from the people they _do_ accept. There are a number of other organizations, some with more rules than others. It looks like the Mutants involved in what happened this morning were members of one of them, so they weren’t completely freelance. Working in groups doesn’t mean people will make the right decisions, or that they’ll succeed in whatever they’re trying to do. And most hero organizations have big problems with people going off on their own instead of doing what they’re told.”

The next student politely waited to be called on before unleashing her sarcasm. “So that’s why you quit the X-Men?”

“That, and so I get to see your smiling faces.”

Nervous, scattered laughter, and no raised hands.

“I mean it,” Hank said. “I choose to work at a public university and teach a diverse group of students. A lot of superheroes, they – they make it their mission to protect humanity, but they never actually _meet_ humanity.”

Someone broke into the ensuing quiet. “That’s fucked up.”

“That’s the problem,” a girl said, commanding an unexpected authority that made a number of heads turn toward her. Hank remembered her name, Elodie, because she was on the softball team, and there’d been some rigmarole with her travel schedule at the beginning of the semester that Hank’d had to sign off on. “Like, obviously you’re a Mutant, Dr. McCoy, but you’re also just a person. Maybe I saw it more because I had to keep coming to your office to deal with that Athletics paperwork, but you need your coffee in the morning like the rest of us, you swear at the projection system when it freezes up, you’re _normal._ And like you pointed out before, most regular people don’t know Mutants, or don’t know they know them, so it’s easy to blame you for stuff. But it sounds like it works both ways. Like a lot of superheroes forget they’re people, and forget to act like people.”

Hank nodded, smiling privately. He loved it when students thought in ways he didn’t, when they made breakthroughs he never would have reached himself. He saw every day the phenomenon that Elodie had described, but he’d never put his finger on it. “Well,” he said. “I think that insight is perfect for wrapping up today’s class. Appropriately, your reading for next week is Chapter 14, forms and causes of mutation.”

Instantly, the class rumbled into a frenzy of packing books into bags and checking phones. They seemed more thoughtful than when they walked in, though, somehow collectively wiser. That was more than Hank usually dreamed of accomplishing in a morning lecture. After shutting down the projection system, he braved the mean streets of East Midtown to pick up a sandwich, then returned to his office to eat lunch and hold office hours. Before he’d unwrapped his sandwich, his office phone rang. Normally, he would have let it spiral into the voicemail vortex, but considering the morning’s tragedy, he thought it best to pick up.

It was Charles. “Hank, are you at the college?”

“For another hour or two.”

“How were you planning to get home?” It was an odd question.

“I usually take the 6 train,” Hank said. “Would I be better off in a cab? Did Carnage shut down the subways again?”

“Logan’s driving down to pick you up,” Charles said. “He told me you’d planned to eat dinner out, but you should go straight home. Or maybe it’s best if you came up here. Just for a few nights, until people settle down.”

“You know there’s no way in hell I’m doing that,” Hank said. “I have classes to teach. Lab samples to check. Baseball games to watch in my underwear.”

“And perhaps it would be best if you canceled all of that for a few days. Until the furor dies down.”

Hank had a hard time keeping his voice down when Charles was patronizing him, but he held it together. “What’s the worst people will do to me? Really, what’s worse than what they’ve already done? I realize people are afraid, but the fact is, Charles, they’ve _always_ been afraid of me.”

“I take your point,” Charles said, clearly not agreeing but at least conceding.

“I’ll wait for Logan,” Hank said. “We’ll order in.”

Charles sighed. “I suppose it could blow over.”

Hank wished Charles a good afternoon and hung up. He tried grading a few quizzes, but he couldn’t focus. Mystique’s warning rang in his ears. People had been waiting to justify hating Mutants, and their time had just come.

Logan took a good three hours to arrive at the college. Homeland Security was probably using the disaster as an excuse to behave like bridge trolls. Hank expected Logan to pull up on his motorcycle – in fact, he’d been wondering why Charles thought two Mutants on a bike would be safer than two Mutants on the subway – but Logan arrived at the wheel of a black SUV with tinted windows. As he squealed into the loading zone, Logan rolled down the windows and snikked out a fist of adamantium claws. Getting in, Hank said, “Where do you plan to park this behemoth?”

“Director Hill told me to garage it and send the bill to S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I thought Charles sent you,” Hank said.

“He did,” Logan said. “And so did S.H.I.E.L.D. We’re popular, you and me.”

“Loved and feared,” Hank said. “You and I, we’re not exactly team players.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t see the team players driving fancy armored vehicles around Manhattan. There’s perks to being an asshole.” Logan covered Hank’s hand with his and laced their fingers together. “What happened in this reality to teach you that? You sure never learned it in mine.”

Hank had to think about that, but not for too long. “When you’re the one member of the team brave enough to question the leader, you end up second in command,” he said. “But you also get left back at the ranch when no one wants to deal with your ideas.”

“Yeah,” Logan said. “That’s what ‘go home’ means.”

“Want to go get a pizza?” Hank wasn’t really hungry, just defiant.

“I like it better than following orders,” Logan said. “But let’s get downtown and park this monster first.”

Hank had expected greasy New York slices, but the S.H.I.E.L.D. car’s GPS directed them to a lot near one of the trendy pizzerias that featured crisp, bubbled crusts and formidable lines. But the tragedy was keeping people at home, and it was three in the afternoon. The heritage house-cured pepperoni was surprisingly delicious. When Hank veered toward curmudgeonliness, New York loved to prove him wrong.

As they were finishing their meal, a woman approached them. She could have been anyone: S.H.I.E.L.D., NYPD, a member of an anti-Mutant organization, a superhero fan in search of an Instagram photo. Or, as it turned out, “I’m Naomi Kim, from the _Daily Bugle._ Can I have a few minutes of your time?”

“No,” Logan said through a mouthful of cheese.

Hank side-eyed him. “Today’s events horrified us both.” He was speaking off the cuff, but every word sounded rehearsed. It was hard to say anything original. “Our hearts and our thoughts are with the families of the people in Stamford who died and were injured.”

“You feel responsible,” Logan cut in, apparently resigned to giving this interview and unwilling to stick to platitudes. “The kids who did this, I didn’t know them well. Some were former students at the Xavier School. I wonder what I could have said to them to prevent them from doing something so dangerous, and at the same time, I know I don’t have that kind of power.”

The reporter smiled; she had her quote. “So what are you doing, going out for pizza?”

“Better ‘n sitting home watching CNN and wringing our hands,” Logan said.

“We were advised to stay home for our own safety.” Hank suddenly felt like he knew what to say. “But we thought it was better to be visible, to remind the rest of the world that we’re just people. We’re grieving, like everyone, and we aren’t helping anyone by cowering in fear.”

“Tony Stark has scheduled a press conference for tomorrow morning,” Ms. Kim said. “Any idea what he’ll say?”

“Anyone ever have any idea what Tony Stark’s going to say at a press conference?” Logan said.

“I haven’t spoken to him,” Hank said. “I imagine he’s busy.”

“Do the X-Men have plans to make a similar statement?” she asked.

“Yeah, but I’m not in on it,” Logan said. “I’m not really the public face.”

“He knows more than I do,” Hank said. “Sorry, no insider info here.”

“The personal reactions are more what I need, anyway,” Ms. Kim said. “But I had to give it a shot.”

“Sure thing,” Hank said. “Good luck with your article.”

“One more thing,” she said. “Will you attend the candlelight vigil in Washington Square Park tonight?”

“Now that we know it exists,” Hank said. He half expected Logan to bristle at his quick acceptance, but Logan asked the reporter for details instead. He had, at times, an old-fashioned graciousness. Hank couldn’t tell if it came from being alive since the Victorian Age, or if it was a trait he’d developed in the alternate reality.

They had hours of free time between dinner and the vigil, and Hank wanted to change out of his humidity-rumpled work clothes. Rebellion stewed in Hank’s mind when Logan pointed out that they were technically following orders. Sweat had glued Hank’s shirt to his skin, and Logan leered as he undressed. Hank shimmied like a burlesque dancer, meaning to be funny, but Logan blanketed him with very serious kisses. “Are you sure this is appropriate?” Hank said.

“No worse than going out for pizza,” Logan said.

They were both seeking comfort. There was no harm in that. “Come to bed,” Hank said, and Logan obeyed, fully clothed, holding his feet in the air to keep his grimy boots off the bedspread. Hank yanked them off and tossed them on the floor with thuds loud enough to perplex his downstairs neighbors. He went for Logan’s pants next. Logan’s hard cock sprung free as soon as Hank unzipped him. 

With Logan belly-up on the bed, it was easy for Hank to dive between his legs and swallow his cock. Usually, Logan bucked and fought when Hank went down on him, especially now that he had the gloves to protect him, but the tragedy had quieted him. He grunted with soft satisfaction as he thickened inside Hank’s mouth and growled happily when Hank slipped a spit-slicked finger in his ass. He warned Hank with his customary marble-mouthed “I’m gonna come,” and he did, with laconic gentleness.

Hank stepped back and stretched. He wasn’t sure what he wanted: a shower, a blow job, or a manly cry in front of the TV news. In the face of horror, he’d taught himself to muffle his own desires and do the necessary thing.

Logan wrapped a gloved hand around Hank’s wrist and pulled him forward, disrupting his balance. “I want you in me,” he said. When Hank hesitated, he swung to his feet and embraced Hank tightly. “Easy now,” Logan said. “Only if you wanna.” But he reached down to refresh Hank’s cock, getting him hard again in a few strokes.

“I do, I think,” Hank said. “I do.”

Logan rolled back onto the bed, taking Hank with him. They were back in the same position, Logan face up with Hank on top. Hank lubed himself up and went in fingers first, briefly, before entering Logan, who winced for a moment before moaning with pleasure. He seemed thrilled to let Hank do all the work. Hank realized Logan’s way of dealing with the unthinkable was to leave the decisions to others, to relinquish control. Solitary and self-sufficient as Logan had learned to be, he was no leader.

Hank had discovered long ago the value of a mind that wandered during sex. It kept him in that middle state longer, aching with arousal but not blind with ecstasy. He was never in a rush to get to the end of sex. When he did come, he felt his willpower had cracked open.

They were in the eye of a storm. They would not have another evening like this for a long time.

Hank got up reluctantly to shower. “What are you supposed to wear to a candlelight vigil?” he shouted to Logan from the bathroom.

“Beats me,” Logan said.

Hank didn’t have much beyond suits, and it was too hot out for a button-down shirt, let alone a jacket. At home, he mostly walked around in underwear, if anything at all. He threw on a pair of drawstring pants he saved for infrequent training sessions with strength-enhanced students at the Xavier Academy and a Hunter College t-shirt he’d bought one day when he’d spilled coffee all over himself in the lab.

A crowd had already begun to assemble when Hank and Logan arrived in the park, although the low evening sun was still bright. The volunteer who handed them their candles instructed them to hold off on lighting the candles until it got darker. “Did either of you want to speak?” she asked. “You know, up front.”

“I think we’re better off letting other people talk tonight,” Hank said.

“Well, if you change your mind, you’ll be welcome,” the girl said.

Most of the speakers knew the dead and missing. The families of the dead had accents: Spanish, Caribbean, Russian. The news report had painted Stamford as an affluent bedroom community, but the survivors revealed a different sort of place, one that seemed somehow more American.

A short, round woman in a sleeveless red dress stepped up to the microphone. “My son, Jose, dreamed of becoming a superhero,” she said. “He jumps off the back of the sofa in his pajamas, holding a shield he made from a pizza box. When I ask him why he wants to be a superhero, he says, ‘Mommy, I want to save people.’” Her voice cracked, and she paused to breathe deep and dab her eyes. “I want to believe in superheroes like Jose did, even though superheroes killed him today. I know people need to be saved. But I think superheroes need to be held accountable. In any other job, if you don’t do it right, if you don’t do it safely, you get fired, and you can’t do that job anymore. The world needs heroes, but it needs the right ones. We, as Americans, we deserve the ability to choose which people have earned the title of superhero.” By now, her tone had shifted from shocked sadness to righteous anger, and her voice pierced Hank’s spine. “I don’t want to blame anyone. Blame won’t save lives. But there has to be a way to change things so we can save our future.”

Hank expected cheering, but this was the wrong environment. Stunned silence buzzed through the park. Logan leaned across Hank’s shoulder to hiss, “This is how it’s gonna go from here, isn’t it?”

Hank wanted to leave the question rhetorical, to turn it into one of many futures that still might not come to pass. He slipped his hand into Logan’s and bowed his head. The tiny flame of the candle in his other hand flickered in the breeze, burning spots into his field of vision.

*

Having wisely turned off his phone’s ringer at the vigil, then wise-foolishly forgotten to turn it back on upon returning home and collapsing into bed fully clothed with Logan as a blanket, Hank woke to discover that he’d missed twenty-three phone calls, thirty text messages, sixty-one non-spam emails, a panoply of Facebook notifications, and an invitation to join Twitter. All before 8 AM, when his alarm clock reminded him that he had an 11:00 graduate seminar to teach. Logan’s hushed, short-tempered voice drifted in from the living room. Presumably, Charles had canceled classes for the day, and Logan was catching up on his own backlogged demands for attention. Hank went into the living room to kiss Logan’s forehead; Logan smiled wolfishly up at him from the sofa. His expression reverted to serious business when he returned to his phone call, though. “Tony. Hank’s up. Why don’t you make some unreasonable demands of _him_ and let me go take a piss.”

Hank tried to protest, but it came out as a yawn. Logan shoved the phone into his hand and barricaded himself in the bathroom.

“Good morning, Hank,” Tony said, somehow acknowledging in four syllables not only that this morning was among the worst, but also that any phone call taking place before ten was inherently bad. “I hope you’re well-rested after a long night of ignoring common sense and getting your picture all over the internet. I’d blame Logan’s bad influence, but this is more your brand of well-intentioned mishap.”

“Picture all over the internet?” Hank croaked.

“Go to Google Images and type in your name,” Tony said. “I’ll wait.”

Too sleepy to argue, Hank followed Tony’s instructions. The first result was a news wire photo of Hank and Logan at the vigil, hand in hand, heads bowed. They were literally the picture of mourning and solidarity. Hank remembered what he’d felt in the moment – terror and uncertainty – but the dim light and the photographer’s angle had rendered those emotions away. In their place was something arguably truer and inarguably good for public relations.

“They caught us both at a good angle, didn’t they?” Hank said.

“While the rest of us were smart enough to stay indoors and plan our next move, you guys went out and became America’s least hated Mutants,” Tony said. “You got those sympathy quotes into the _Bugle,_ too. I wish I were in your shoes.”

“You want to answer all these emails? Be my guest.”

“I have my own emails,” Tony said. “Plus a press conference in an hour, which is why –“

Hank interrupted him, unwilling to be asked for the inevitable favor yet. “Yeah, but none of yours have ‘Boyfriends or Bromance?’ in the subject line.”

“Funnily enough, even the fact that Logan is in your apartment in the unseemly hours of morning on a Thursday doesn’t answer that question,” Tony said. “But I’m assuming bromance.”

“Boyfriends,” Hank said, proud of how much it would mess with Tony.

Tony didn’t muster up a witty comeback, just returned to business. He must have felt far more rattled than he sounded. “So we’re announcing a plan to mandate superhero registration. Federally. For Mutants as well as non-registered freelance crime fighters.”

“Well, that’s a terrible idea,” Hank said.

“Would you like me to explain to you why it isn’t?”

“I’ll wait for the press conference,” Hank said.

“So I guess it’s not worth asking you if I can name you as a supporter of the proposed legislation?” Despite the sarcasm, Tony’s voice carried a trace of hope.

“I’m tied for America’s least-hated Mutant,” Hank said. “I’d rather hold onto that for a while.”

“There will be consequences for fighting this, Hank.”

“I’ll obey the law,” Hank said. “I usually do.”

Tony clicked his tongue. “You know, I’m starting to see why you and Logan might belong together.”

“You’ll catch on eventually.”

“And so will you,” Tony said. “This is the future, like it or not.”

“Beats the hell out of a robot apocalypse,” Hank said. Before Tony had time to parse that one, Hank added, “Have a good press conference,” and hung up.

*

"I thought I was already registered," Hank said affably as he sat down with Jen and the file folders full of federal forms she'd brought to the Xavier School. He didn't envy Jen her job: she had dozens of school faculty to counsel, plus a number of graduates who'd shown up when Charles had sent out one of his well-intentioned mass alumni emails. The students were a whole different story because they were minors, many with official residences in faraway states and less-than-cooperative parents. For a program intended to urge Mutants and masked vigilantes to trust the government, it was doing a terrible job of making compliance seem worthwhile.

"Since you’re a known Mutant, the government has records of your identity and abilities, so in that sense, yes, you're already obeying the law," Jen said. "But if you leave things as they are, you have a good chance of getting hauled in on a technicality." Jen pushed her thick-framed glasses up her nose. A radiation experiment had left her huge and green-skinned, but she'd stayed in law school, choosing to fight battles in the courtroom rather than with her fists. Charles, meaning well, had fixed Jen and Hank up on a date once, with awkward results. The two of them side by side in a bar had felt like a punchline. It had probably prevented them from becoming true friends.

Jen opened a file folder and placed a crisp, stapled packet of papers in front of him. "This is a Statement of Heroic Activity," she said.

"I'm not really involved in any," Hank said.

"I know, and filling this out will provide an official record of that," Jen said. "Otherwise, the government will recruit you based on your abilities."

"Recruit me?"

"Yeah, that's one of the clauses in the new law that they're trying to sweep under the rug," Jen said with a sigh. "By registering as a Mutant, you're volunteering to serve the United States and the State of New York in any situations in which they require superhuman assistance. With your mutation profile, it'd be a full-time job."

"Who are the motherfuckers who thought that would be a good idea?"

"Relax," Jen said. "I'm getting you out of it."

"My hero."

She smiled tightly. "The bad news is, if you submit a Heroic Activity form with nothing on it, they'll assume you're trying to hide what you're up to. The good news is, you can claim all of your research, as well as your work here at the school, since your intellect and mental stamina are listed as Mutant abilities."

Hank studied the form, its clusters of fine print and its boxes too small for writing real explanations. The Federal government sure had drawn these nightmares up in a hurry. "So this is how we live now," Hank said.

"Until someone figures out a way to bring it up before the Supreme Court," Jen said.

"Someone like you?"

"I have a shabby private practice that barely pays the rent," she said. "No, it'll be someone human, representing a Mutant with nonthreatening powers and a promising future."

"But you think it's unconstitutional?"

"I'm no expert," Jen said. "But four, five, and fourteen are my lucky numbers."

Her clue took a minute to decode. Hank hadn't taken a civics class in decades. Search and seizure; self-incrimination; equal protection. Those sounded like the right amendments.

"But until then," he said, "this is how we live."

She slapped another form in front of him. "This is a Prior Employment Waiver. It says that you're employed full-time in a field other than public service and protection, and that your work responsibilities preclude engagement in vigilante justice. I've already contacted the Human Resources office at Hunter College so they can send the supporting documents."

"So the government can't make me skip a class to go save the world?"

"They might not even be able to pull you out of your lab," she said. "If the waiver goes through. Which it's somewhat designed not to. Small business owners like me are more or less fucked."

Hank sighed. "This is going to get worse, isn't it?"

Jen looked down at her green hands as if unstuck in time, imagining futures. "I believe in the law," she said. "I believe in justice, and in getting it for people. But I know you sometimes have to work against the law's intentions to arrive at justice."

"Lawyers and scientists." Hank chuckled. "We speak two different languages, don't we?"

"I know you want numbers, or probabilities, or a _yes,_ " Jen said. "But all I can tell you is what I hope for, and what I have to offer."

"This is what it's really going to be," Hank said. "All of us talking around each other because we're afraid to screw each other over."

"Not a lot of room for science in the law," Jen said.

*

“We don't need to register in person.” Hank was trying not to sound patronizing but doing an admittedly poor job. “The government already has files on us, and they're not going to get any more accurate if we spend an afternoon at the Yonkers DMV.”

“You and I don't,” Kitty said. “But the students do, and a lot of the younger Mutants still in training at the school. It would be a nice show of solidarity if you and Logan came along.”

“If you're trying to convince me that Logan's already in on this, I've got a bridge to sell you,” Hank said.

“He told me he'd go if you did,” Kitty said, so smugly that Hank could tell she wasn't lying, although he could hardly conceive of the rhetorical calisthenics involved in getting Logan to that point.

“He told you that knowing I'd turn you down.”

“Please, Hank,” Kitty persisted. “Scott and Jean already said no – they're adamant about laying low until this blows over. But situations like this don't blow over. They escalate, unless someone makes a move.”

“Sometimes, they escalate _because_ someone makes a move,” Hank pointed out.

“Which is why you'd be helpful,” Kitty said. “More than anyone else, you figure out the right thing to say. A way to appeal to people's rational minds.”

“Hm,” he said. She was getting to him a bit. He hadn't intended to make himself the media's friendly face of Mutant-kind, but the photos from the vigil had pacified anti-Mutant sentiment enough that he'd felt safe on the sidewalk and subway since.

“Besides, we already made you a t-shirt,” Kitty said.

“Kitty, an army of Mutants marching into a suburban government building wearing anarchist slogans – it's not going to further your cause.”

“No slogans,” she said. “We _have_ thought this through. Jean said no uniforms, so it's just a way to make ourselves identifiable, especially when half of us pass for human.”

“Don't count on me wearing it. _Or_ Logan,” Hank said.

“But you'll go?”

Hank sighed, mostly for effect. “I'll go. _We'll_ go.”

Two days later, he canceled the office hours after his morning class and took a quiet mid-day train up to Westchester. The front lawn of the Xavier School was lively with students and recent graduates, preparing to descend upon the Yonkers DMV. A rented school bus idled in the driveway. As he approached, Hank caught Logan's eye and waved hello. Logan, who had been holding court over a group of girls, put his arm around Hank's shoulder and led him aside. “Suddenly, they're all real interested in the Canadian suffrage movement,” Logan said.

“I wouldn't want to deprive them of their education,” Hank said. “We'll catch up later.”

Kitty jogged up to Hank, bearing a t-shirt for him. She shook it out and showed off the words on the front, in yellow letters on a blue background: “Distinguished Professor of Biology.” Hank scanned the lawn and figured out the pattern. Most of the students' shirts said things like “Dean's List at SUNY Purchase” or “100% Completion of BioShock 2.” Kitty's read, “1995 Great Lakes Juvenile Figure Skating Champion.”

“All their idea,” Kitty said as Hank changed out of the shirt and tie he'd arrived in. “To label ourselves as all the other things we are, besides Mutants.”

“Jean signed off on the colors?”

“Professor Xavier told her she had to let it go,” Kitty said. “She's, well, she's less than happy.” She looked around and frowned, like she was worried about what the students might overhear. “It's complicated. I – I have to herd these kids onto the bus. We can talk about it later.”

Hank was one of the last to climb aboard and ended up sitting in the front row with Bobby Drake. “I'm surprised you joined in,” Hank said. “I thought you were pledging neutrality with Jean and Scott.”

“I am,” Bobby said. “But I got an official letter about an error in my paperwork, so I have to go fill it out again anyway. And I didn't want to be the jerk who refused to wear a matching shirt.” He held it out so Hank could read it: “Certified Public Accountant.”

“If it makes you feel better, I have mixed feelings, too,” Hank said.

“I don't know if that helps,” Bobby said. “You get to go home at the end of the day. I have to come back and see if Jean uses this field trip as an excuse to put the school on lockdown. Not just for the kids, but _faculty._ ”

“Yeah, if that goes through, wish her luck finding a sub for my class.”

“It won't,” Bobby said. “Professor Xavier would never put up with it. And that's – well, I don't want to gossip.”

“Not in front of the students, at least?” Hank said.

“Exactly.” Bobby held his breath a moment before adding, “And I'm stuck in the middle. Right where I don't want to be.”

“The middle's not so bad,” Hank said. “At least you know for sure you're not an extremist.”

Bobby rolled his eyes, then nodded. He sat silent for a while, and Hank watched the suburbs roll by.

“Why are we going to Yonkers?” Hank asked. “White Plains would be closer.”

Bobby laughed. “Have you ever been to the White Plains DMV? I think there was a _Twilight Zone_ episode about it. Or an Eagles song.”

“I'm glad you picked up a few things in my combat training sessions,” Hank said.

“I signed up for every single one of those,” Bobby said. “Pretty sure I learned more than I would have if we'd run actual combat drills.”

Hank's combat training sessions had begun after he'd lost an argument with Jean about his lack of involvement with the X-Men and ended six years later when Hank had felt he'd proven his point. Hank had begun each session by saying, “What do I know about combat? People run into me and fall down. Here, learn some culture.” Then, he'd popped a classic movie in the VCR or played old records. The students, overtrained and exhausted, had appreciated the social time. It remained one of Hank's prouder moral victories.

“I have an interview with an accounting firm next week,” Bobby said. “I can't decide what I'll do if I get the job.”

“Now's a good time to have a job in the human world,” Hank said.

Bobby smiled like Hank had provided him with the key to a frustrating lock. “It's just, the mansion is so divided now. Kitty and most of the older students are vocally anti-Registration – not enough to break the law, but enough to keep bringing it up loudly at school meetings. Logan and Professor Xavier hold their tongues, but I can tell they agree. But Jean and Scott are demanding complete neutrality, to the point where even people like Marie, who are pro-Reg, are feeling oppressed. And I'm – I mean, personally I think the laws are bullshit, but with what Marie's been through, I get why she thinks they're important. And I feel like I'm the only one who can see both sides, who doesn't feel the need to enforce their opinion on everyone.”

“I'm sorry to hear the team is at odds,” Hank said, holding back the fact that he wasn't at all surprised. Just as Stamford had given America's Mutants and superheroes an excuse to fight out a long-brewing conflict, it had ignited long-smoldering disagreements within the X-Men. The core team got along, but the often uneasy peace made Hank grateful to stand on the outside.

“There might not be much of a team if they keep digging in their heels,” Bobby said.

“And you might be the only one who can hold them together,” Hank said. “So you have to decide whether it's your responsibility to keep the peace.”

“Part of me is ready to cut the X-Men loose. Especially with how weird things have been since Marie and I split up. But it's that sense of duty.”

Hank knew it was a distraction, but he couldn't pass up a crucial piece of gossip. “You broke up with Marie?”

“Yeah, a couple weeks ago. Quietly, you know. I think we'll end up friends once things settle down. I just, I didn't love her the way I wanted to, the way she needed me to.”

“I'm sorry,” Hank said uselessly.

“Mostly, I think it just means I need to get out of the mansion,” Bobby said. “Meet some new people.”

“Whatever you think is right.” Hank was desperate not to get involved if romance was a factor in the infighting.

“That's the problem,” Bobby said. “I don't know what's right.”

“Maybe that's the first step. Not being sure.”

Bobby smiled and tugged at his t-shirt collar. “It's funny. When I was a kid, you were my favorite teacher. I mean, hands down. But we've never talked like equals, like adults. It's weird to think I've gotten there, I've caught up, I can do that. But I miss – I miss having someone to look up to.”

“If it'll help, I can try raising my pedestal a little higher.” Hank chuckled at his own joke, but Bobby didn't catch on.

The bus pulled up to the DMV building, and Kitty gave final instructions. There was to be no shouting of slogans, no behaving like this was a protest. Everyone needed to act like they were just coming in to process documents. If other people took pictures or video, that was great, but the X-Men themselves had to pretend there was nothing unusual going on.

“The incredible thing is, they'll all go along with it,” Bobby said. “They'll complete the mission perfectly, just to prove they can.”

“Sounds like you've got them paying attention in math class,” Hank said.

Since Hank and Logan had no documents of their own to fill out, they hung around the waiting area, keeping an eye on the students, not saying much to each other. As expected, the other DMV patrons were getting their phones out, recording the moment, spreading it across the internet. Logan kept accidentally tapping the back of his hand against Hank's, until finally, tired of it, Hank laced his fingers in Logan's. He thought Logan might swat him away, but instead Logan growled, “Hey, what the hell.”

Without permission, some girl took their picture. Logan shook his hand loose, but Hank leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Stop trying to get our picture on the internet,” Logan said.

“It'll happen either way,” Hank said. “Which you knew, or you would have said no to Kitty in the first place.”

“I said yes to Kitty because it'd get you to drag your ass out here,” Logan said. “Totally selfish decision.”

“And then you can take the train back with me and avoid the massive confrontation that'll erupt as soon as the bus pulls up to the mansion?”

“Like I said. Totally selfish decision.”

***

**CHAPTER THREE**

_I’m not their hero, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t brave  
I never walked the party line, doesn’t mean that I was never afraid_

***

“How’d you get in?” Hank asked when Logan showed up at his apartment door with beer and Indian food. 

“The doorman knows me,” Logan said proudly. “Little guy, always wants to chat about the Mets?”

“Armando.” Hank remembered hiring him. 

Logan set the food down on the kitchen table and reached into the cabinets for plates and flatware. “Armando,” he repeated.

“You’ll have to entertain yourself tonight,” Hank said. “If I don’t get these final exam grades into the system by noon tomorrow, the Registrar will start sending me death threats.”

“You can take her,” Logan said.

“I don’t know. She’s a pretty tough broad.”

Logan came up behind Hank and rubbed his shoulders. The soothing touch made Hank realize how hunched and tense he’d become. “Too bad your life’s in danger,” Logan said. “It might be the last time we see each other for a while.”

“You picked up a job somewhere?” Hank asked. Now that school was out for the summer, Logan had time for freelance vigilante work. And with his Registration in order, there wasn’t much Charles or the U. S. government could do to stop him.

“Got one shoved at me, is more like it,” Logan said. 

“And you can’t turn it down?”

“Not a chance,” Logan said. “Official S.H.I.E.L.D. business. They sent the mission specs on the last day of school. Like they’d been sitting on ‘em for a while, waiting for their loophole to kick in.”

Hank scrambled to his feet. “I’ll call Jen.”

Logan pushed him back down into his seat. “No. Save it.”

“If you do this one, you’ll just give them an excuse to pile more and more on you,” Hank said. “You have to put a stop to it now.”

“I’m counting on that,” Logan said. “But this job - this one’s easy. Right in my wheelhouse. Might even serve the greater good. I probably would have taken it anyway.”

“Well, it’s not what I would do, but I can’t imagine that’ll change your mind,” Hank said.

“I figure I’ll build up some good will before I tell them how they can go fuck themselves.”

Hank chuckled. “Your strategic instincts are so much more sophisticated than mine.”

Logan plopped onto the couch, beaming at the compliment. Hank stretched and joined him; he’d finished most of his grading, and he could wake up early to take care of the rest. “Just promise to come back quickly,” Hank said. “Before I start to miss you.”

“If I have my way, it’ll be over in a day,” Logan said. “But I’ve got a feeling I’ll have some S.H.I.E.L.D. flunky breathing down my neck the whole time, making sure I do things their way. Like they’re the ones with a century of experience.”

It was the first time Hank had heard Logan speak of his job with pride, or with any emotion at all. He’d never entirely believed that Logan approached his murder missions with ice in his veins, but he hadn’t understood how the empathetic and ethical man in his bed could transform into an assassin for hire. But there was no contradiction. Logan’s humaneness and his principles made him the best at what he did. “So shake them off and do the job,” Hank said. “And then come home and bring more takeout, because that smells incredible.”

“Table’s set,” Logan said. “Let’s dig in before it gets cold. And before that beer gets warm.” 

They loaded their plates and opened their beers. For a minute, Hank thought that Logan had moved on, that he wasn’t fretting about the job ahead of him anymore. But with a mouthful of saag paneer hovering on his fork, Logan muttered, “I’m a scalpel, and they’re using me like a Kalashnikov.”

Hank gave him a curry-scented kiss on the cheek. “How long have you been turning that metaphor around in your mind?”

“Since 1972,” Logan said. “Applies in all kinds of situations. And there’s variations. You, for example. Putting you on the front lines of a fight is like using a supercomputer as a battering ram.”

“They should list ‘folksy analogies’ on your registration card,” Hank said.

“Maybe that’s how I’ll kill this kid,” Logan said, letting the green glob of spinach and cheese slide back onto his plate. 

“More likely, it’s how you’ll get the S.H.I.E.L.D. babysitter off your ass.”

“Talking people to death is your M. O., not mine,” Logan said. He took a heavy, thoughtful swallow of beer. “But maybe it’s time I learned a few new moves.”

Hank leaned across the table to kiss him. “I can show you a few moves.”

“I bet you can,” Logan said. “But after dinner. I might not get a meal like this for a while.”

Hank wanted to protest, but it would have sounded disingenuous. Logan remembered a decade of deprivation that Hank hoped to never know the equal of. He’d probably live long enough to see Logan overcome the suspicion that every good meal might be his last, but only because Hank was genetically destined to live longer than most people.

They had their farewell sex, watched a few episodes of _Breaking Bad_ (a show never made in Logan’s dystopian reality, now his first choice when they had time for TV together), and finished the beer. Logan left at dawn, waking Hank to kiss him goodbye. Although Logan had admonished Hank to go back to sleep, Hank’s neurons remained stubbornly active. He made too much coffee and finished his grading before his alarm went off.

Restless and lonely, Hank got dressed and took a walk. Along the way, he happened upon the waffle truck and munched his sweet, sticky bounty as he headed east toward the river. In the park that overlooked the water, Little League games filled the baseball diamonds. Hank would have enjoyed watching one, but there was no way for a lone middle-aged man to sit in the bleachers without seeming creepy. He wandered down the footpath until he found a quiet spot in the shade to eat his second waffle. The view on the other side of the river was all Williamsburg high-rises, but Hank imagined he could see Stamford, too, wilting in the sultry heat, trying to pull itself back together. 

His phone startled him with a news update. Battles had erupted between S.H.I.E.L.D. and an emerging anti-Registration resistance group, with property damage in Hell’s Kitchen, fires and bus cancellations at Port Authority, and a tourist fatally wounded near Bryant Park. He texted Jen: _What the fuck is going on?_

Jen texted back immediately, as if relieved to have someone to talk to. _Not sure, but I’m staying the hell out of it._

They sent a few messages back and forth. Gradually, Hank’s mind eased. Midtown Manhattan seemed a world away from this green place. 

A police officer loomed over Hank, and he almost jumped out of his skin. “What are you doing here, sir?” the cop said, sneering the last word so it resonated with derision more than respect.

“Eating breakfast and enjoying the view,” Hank said, willing himself to stay calm.

“Show me your registration card.”

The cop tensed as Hank reached toward his pocket. “Let me get out my wallet,” Hank said. He flipped through it. “I must have left it at home. Here’s my state ID, though. I’m sure you can use it to verify that I’m registered.”

“You’re required to carry your registration card with you at all times, sir,” the cop said.

“I know. I’m sorry. I must have left it in my briefcase after work yesterday.”

“Stand up and follow me,” the cop ordered.

“Am I under arrest?” Hank asked. “Because funnily enough, I was just texting my lawyer.”

The cop frowned. “Don’t forget your card again. In fact, why don’t you go home and get it now?”

“I was just headed there,” Hank said. “Have a good day, Officer.”

Spooked, Hank hardly left his apartment in the three days before Logan came home. Logan said nothing about his mission, and Hank didn’t ask. A fearful silence had settled over the city, and they both sat under its weight, reading the news and wondering how long they could pretend the violence was happening somewhere else, to other people.

After a week, Logan got another job he couldn’t turn down. They said goodbye with blow jobs and takeout again, but it was a subdued affair. Logan would always survive, would always return, but Hank was no longer certain what he’d return to.

*

Kitty never called Hank. If she had a long thought, she emailed, and anything off-the-cuff came as a text message. She had the soul of the protagonist of an eighteenth-century epistolary novel and the unlimited mobile data plan of a modern woman. _Piotr's gone, she wrote. And Prof X too._

_Foul play?_ Hank tapped back. When Kitty had first shown him how to send texts, he'd marveled at the painful inefficiency, repeatedly pushing number keys to eke out letters. Today's on-screen keyboards lacked the haptic satisfaction of a typewriter, but they served their function. It was faster to write than to speak.

_I think they skipped the country. They took some of the students too. Not safe here with the new regs._

Hank was surprised for a moment, since the violence in the city had calmed down. But that temporary quiet gave Charles a perfect opportunity to slip away with minimal resistance. _But the school is ok?_ Hank wrote.

_Scott and Jean have things under control._ That reply came quickly, and nothing followed. Hank sensed there was more to it but allowed Kitty time to think. Without looking her in the eye, he could not decipher her unease.

Hank stretched and got a beer out of the fridge. A midsummer lightning storm had crackled through the city in the morning, and afternoon sunshine was evaporating the rainwater into garbage-flavored steam. Hank had scattered tasks to complete – an article to peer-review, co-op board minutes to skim – but the foul, humid air weighed his head down. He bought a novel to read on his laptop screen, critically praised but not too challenging, hoping he'd be able to lose himself instead of sneering at it.

As he lay back to read, Kitty texted again. _The school is full of people. Not sure why I feel so alone._

Hank felt the shadow of Logan's absence hovering in his empty bed. _You can come down to the city if you'd like,_ he texted back. _I'll buy you dinner._

_I'd love that,_ Kitty wrote.

Kitty didn't get into the city much, and she texted from the commuter train to ask him how to hail a cab. Hank replied that he'd meet her at Grand Central. When he found her waiting at the information kiosk, she hugged him like tragic circumstances had kept them apart for years. He squeezed her back, needing the companionship too.

“Come on, kid,” Hank said. “Today you learn how to take the subway.”

The promise of adventure seemed to ease her anxiety. “Everything's a teaching moment for you, isn't it?” she teased as they merged into the crowd.

While they waited for the 6 train, a bag lady stared at them. Sometimes people with shaky mental health couldn't decide whether Hank was a hallucination.

“I should do this more often,” Kitty said. “I keep forgetting it's only a forty-minute train ride.”

They found seats on the subway train, which was pleasantly underpopulated in the lull before rush hour. An announcement rumbled semi-intelligibly over the PA: “Due to a police incident, this train will run express after 14th Street.”

“Well, that's a pain,” Hank said, downplaying the inconvenience. “But it's too early for dinner anyway. We can get coffee in Union Square, or the Greenmarket's probably open today.”

“Do you think it's something to do with Registration and the resistance movement?” Kitty asked in hushed tones as they rode the escalator to the surface. “The 'police action.'”

It should have occurred to Hank; it was foolish to assume that the violence had just stopped cold. “Hoping for the best, assuming the worst,” Hank replied.

The Union Square Greenmarket remained unperturbed. Inspired by the vegetables, Kitty said, “Why don't you let me cook you something?” Confirming that the question was more of a command, she skipped ahead of him to negotiate at a stall advertising whole free-range ducks. They weren't cheap, but they'd cost less than the restaurant he'd planned to take her to. Hank hung back as she picked through salad greens and compared peaches, proud that she'd not only learned to cook during her time away from the X-Men but to plan a meal on the fly. She looked so much like a little girl to him, and he knew that arose more from the tricks of his memory than from her telomeric mutation.

Kitty had loaded both of them with produce – not to mention Long Island oysters, a blueberry pie, and the duck – and it was clear they'd need a cab home. “Shall we pick up a bottle of wine first?” Hank said.

They were comparing Riojas when an otherworldly boom rattled the liquor store shelves. Outside, an inhuman streak of blue-green light shot down Broadway. The shop clerk, who'd been playing games on his phone a moment earlier, glanced out the window, then over at Hank and Kitty. “I can hold your bags behind the counter,” he said.

“I thought you weren't getting involved,” Kitty whispered.

“I couldn't live with myself if I didn't,” Hank said. “Not if we're right here. Let's try to de-escalate it, see if we can get them all to go home and cool their heads.”

Kitty sighed emphatically and left her bounty with the store clerk. She took Hank by the wrist so she could pull him along as she phased through traffic, car hoods and lampposts deforming and coalescing in their wake. The standoff had stopped traffic at Broadway and 14th. A team of S.H.I.E.L.D. officers in full riot gear surrounded a ten-foot-tall blonde girl and a skinny black boy with a stars-and-stripes shield. “Damn it,” Kitty said. “That's Eli and Cassie. They're – I mean, they're nice kids.”

Kitty led Hank into the center of the intersection. “Hold your fire!” someone yelled, and to Hank's relief, both sides stood down.

“Okay,” Hank shouted. “Everybody listen for a minute. “You two -” he pointed at the rebels - “are going to surrender. And the rest of you are going to escort them to a well-lit, publicly accessible waiting room at Stark Tower until their lawyer arrives.”

“These unregistered vigilantes are in violation of the Federal Registration Act,” one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers said into a megaphone. “We're authorized to use necessary force to prevent their escape.”

“There's no force necessary,” Hank said, his voice small in comparison. “They're going to cooperate, and you're going to grant them access to an attorney who can clear up this – this error in their documentation.”

“And in exchange, you guys don't look like an army of jack-booted thugs,” Kitty piped up.

One of the S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers raised a weapon, but the commanding officer gestured for him to stand down. Kitty herded everyone to the sidewalk and erected a wall of shimmering, disrupted space-time between the factions. After a final round of car horns, traffic resumed.

The lead S.H.I.E.L.D. agent took off his helmet, revealing a livid Clint Barton. “You're impeding a Federal operation, Hank.”

“I'm protecting thousands of civilians,” Hank said. “Wasn't that always the priority?”

“Yeah.” Clint rubbed his temple, squinting into the sunlight. “The rebels run out into the open so we don't have a choice. I hate how it looks. I hate what they're dragging us into.”

“So stop taking the bait,” Hank said.

Clint shook his head like Hank's naivete was crushing him.

“If I call them a lawyer, am I in trouble for aiding them?” Hank said.

“Not in my book,” Clint said. “Like you said, they've already surrendered, and it's probably just a mistake in their documents.” He offered a tight-lipped smile.

Hank got out his phone. “Hey, Jen,” he said when she answered. “How fast can you get to Union Square with two sets of Registration applications?”

“Your lawyer will be here in fifteen minutes,” Hank told the rebels when he'd hung up. “In the meantime, behave yourselves.”

Cassie, who'd shrunk herself back to normal human size, glowered at him. “You're fucking everything up, Dr. McCoy.”

“What, did you think I was on your side?” Hank said. “I think Registration is ill-conceived, but I think blowing yourselves up in a busy intersection to prove a point is idiotic, too.”

“You know what's really idiotic?” Eli said. “Thinking you're above us. You have to choose a side. Do you really want to be on theirs?”

“Maybe there are more than two sides,” Hank said.

“When are there ever more than two sides?” Eli said. “Right and wrong, good and evil, tyranny and freedom, those are your choices. It's a black and white world whether you like it or not.”

“It's hard to blend into black and white when you're blue,” Kitty said. She'd kept silent for so long, he'd assumed she was staying out of it.

“So what's your excuse?” Cassie sneered.

“I just bought a pie, and a duck, and an enormous fennel bulb,” Kitty said. “I bought them from really nice people. I don't want to see them get hurt.”

“Do you really want to be the asshole who blew up Union Square to prove a point?” Clint strolled as close as he could to Kitty's force field, exuding the illusion of control. “This situation began with a massacre. The worst thing _either_ side can do for their reputation is harm more civilians. You want to resist? Fine, but keep it off the streets.”

Jen shoved past the semicircle of onlookers. She'd slung the strap of her briefcase over her yoga clothes, and her green-black hair was slipping out of a hasty bun. She went up to Clint, acknowledging Hank only with a wry nod. “Are you going to make me do this in the middle of the street,” she asked Clint, “or can we find a conference room at S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ?”

“We've got a helicopter waiting on top of the movie theater,” Clint said. “The only thing missing was you.”

“Great.” Jen turned to the two rebels. “You two, don't say a word, and do everything I tell you.” Finally, to Hank, she said, “What are you even _doing_ here?”

“Picking out a bottle of wine to go with dinner,” Hank said. In his peripheral vision, he caught Kitty stifling a laugh, which made the force field shudder. “Kitty came down from Westchester for. . . a change of scenery.”

“For a _visit,”_ Kitty corrected him.

“If we don't get back to the wine shop soon, I think the guy watching our groceries is going to give up and eat our pie,” Hank said.

“Go,” Jen said. “I'll take it from here.”

The guy at the wine store had not eaten their pie. Rather, he had picked out two bottles for them. “On the house,” he said. “The Malbec will pair well with the duck, and the Prosecco is for dessert. Thanks for, um, actually protecting the city. Instead of, well, I'm sure you've been following the news. I have a friend in Fort Greene whose building got hit by a fireball, and – he was at work, thank God, but he lost _everything._ S.H.I.E.L.D. cut him a check, but still: his computer and all his recording equipment, comic books he's had since he was a kid, his fucking _cat._ And – sorry. You don't want to hear all this.”

Hank patted his shoulder firmly. “It's exactly what I wanted to hear.” He took out his wallet, but the guy waved him away firmly, accepting only a handshake.

“How did you know we weren't going to go out there and blow up Union Square, though?” Kitty asked the clerk. Hank felt torn among admiring her bluntness, wishing she'd be more considerate, and reminding himself that she was an adult.

The clerk shrugged. “I know who you are. Well, who he is. But it was more, when you saw that light flash, it was like you were enjoying your day off and you got called into work all of a sudden.”

“Thanks,” Kitty said. “For the explanation and the wine.”

Traffic trudged down Broadway at its usual pace, the excitement already erased. Hank heard the S.H.I.E.L.D. chopper take off as he hailed a cab.

When they arrived at Hank's apartment, Kitty said, “I'm not sure I've ever been here before.”

“Most people in Westchester act like I'm imposing on their time when I invite them down here,” Hank said. “So I stopped bothering.”

“It gets good light,” Kitty said. “Kind of small, though.”

“For Manhattan, this is spacious.”

Kitty surveyed Hank's kitchen. “I half expected your oven to be full of books.”

“Hey, I heat up a frozen pizza every once in a while,” Hank said. “More than that, these days, with Logan around.” His glasses felt suddenly tight on his nose, and he rubbed the dent of skin where they rested.

“You miss him,” Kitty said.

“More than I expected to.”

“You guys make me really happy,” she said. “It's like my two dads finally got together.”

“Did you – did you see something there? Between him and me. Before the time paradox resolved, when he was the other version of himself.”

“It was wishful thinking, mostly,” Kitty said. “But the two of you would have a moment every so often.”

Kitty started getting food out of their shopping bags, laying each ingredient out in an order logical to her. She sent Hank scurrying for kitchen tools. “It's nice to have a kitchen to myself,” she said.

“You're always welcome,” Hank said. “You've always been.”

“And I knew that,” Kitty said. “The way you know things but don't believe them.”

“So believe it, kid,” Hank said.

*

There was a honeyed, British-accented, “Hank, I hope I'm not interrupting you,” in Hank's head. It must have been important, because on August 30, 1982, Charles had signed a drunkenly assembled document swearing not to contact Hank by telepathy unless a phone call was impossible.

Hank made deliberate mental gestures toward having been awake for several hours, not being at a crucial stage of an experiment, and wearing pants. One of his chief objections to telepathy was his lack of natural ability to transmit his thoughts in words and sentences. He received Charles's calm and orderly voice in his mind but could send back only images, feelings, and the occasional number. Charles assured Hank that it was no trouble, and in fact rather a pleasure. Hank, however, felt like a music lover who couldn't carry a tune.

“I'm in Costa Rica,” Charles said.

Perplexed. Annoyed that Charles hadn't told him before leaving.

“I've brought the students with Registration issues here for the time being, along with Piotr. We'll be able to speak more frankly this way than over the phone.”

Still confused, but for different reasons.

“Remember that I mentioned I'd be contacting some old acquaintances and calling in favors? Well, I located Erik.”

This was beginning to make sense but also to turn Hank's stomach.

“After he'd finished lecturing me about the fact that he had been warning me for decades that the US government would pull this sort of fascist bullshit sooner or later, he offered refuge to any Mutants in need. I took him up on it.”

Bitter distrust and skepticism. Visual montage of the many times in the past forty years when Charles and Erik had attempted reconciliation, betrayed one another, and stormed off dramatically in opposite directions, leaving Charles devastated.

“I know,” Charles said. “But I hope, this time, that we've outgrown all that.”

Emphatic cynicism. Replay of montage.

“Don't start with me, Hank. I'm being careful. I'm merely choosing optimism.” In a flood of emotions that Charles seemed incapable of restraining, Charles sent Hank a moment of memory. A night perfumed with rain and sugar, the humid air heavy as a wet dog. A rush of breath and a kiss, longing that exploded into desire.

Hank recoiled. Too much information.

“I wanted you to understand.”

Hank understood; he did not want to experience it firsthand.

“Do you realize how much of _your_ new love affair I've endured?” Charles said, lighthearted but not at all joking. “The two of you are emotionally noisy, especially after everyone else has gone to sleep.”

Regret and shame, tinged with curiosity about whether Charles just meant the nights Hank and Logan had spent at the mansion, or if Charles was picking up signals all the way from Manhattan.

“It won't be forever,” Charles said. “Even if I wanted it to be, we both know Erik. But I'd rather have it for now than never at all.”

That, Hank did understand. He pushed his love for Charles ahead of all his misgivings in the hope that for a moment, Charles would feel nothing else.

“Thank you,” Charles said. “Comfort is in short supply these days.”

Agreement.

“I'm glad to have your reassurance that I'm not being _overly_ foolish,” Charles said.

Hank scoffed. But all love was foolish. He took a moment to figure out how to express that in a way that Charles could read. He conjured an image of Logan and let all his doubts rise to the surface: his loneliness when Logan was gone, his frustration and futile compassion toward the psychic pain he could not heal, his irritation at how public their affair had become, his nagging conviction that they would cave to the absurdity of their perfect mismatch before they lived long enough to grow apart.

He had a lot to work on.

“You're right,” Charles said. “You're not one to judge. And I could listen harder.”

Hank was going to hold Charles to that last part.

“My energy is wearing down,” Charles said. “I'll contact you again when I can. Take care of yourself, Hank.”

Hank wondered if Charles had time to feel how acutely Hank missed him before he cut off the connection.

*

Hank came home to find Logan on the bed. Right away, his presence felt amiss, not only because Logan wasn't due back in New York for several days at least, but because he was wearing a shirt and no gloves. Hank ran through the undesirable possibilities in his head: clone, memory loss, more damn time travel. He sniffed the air, hoping to fill his throat with Logan's leathery musk, but instead got a fragrance that, while fundamentally unlike green Jell-o, nonetheless reminded him of it. And he knew.

"Hi, Mystique," he said.

"I was hoping you wouldn't figure it out _that_ quickly," she said in her own voice, not changing her shape.

"You thought I wouldn't recognize my own lover?"

"You'd be surprised how many people don't," Mystique said. "How could you tell?"

"If I tell you, you'll know how to fool me next time." He sat down on his bed, nudging her aside. "Now, could you stop looking like him? It's annoying."

"I thought you might enjoy the illusion," she said. "With him gone, and all."

"What do you expect to get out of this, a blow job?"

Before she shifted back to her own form, she wore on Logan's face an expression of deep longing, a grief for something that never was. Hank had never seen Logan himself make a face remotely like it. It would have been physically possible for him, but it would not have been him. Mystique, on the other hand – Hank saw that part of her would have relished his intimacy, even if achieved under false pretenses.

"You're the first person to see through that disguise," she said. "I've been impersonating him for weeks." Before Hank could open his mouth to roar at her, she added, "Not with you. I was pretty sure you'd catch me out. But I've been hiding out with the anti-Registration rebels. Helping."

"As Logan? Why Logan?"

"I thought about showing up as myself," Mystique said. "But Steve, Matt, Luke – they don't know me. Logan, they know, or think they do. And they know he's unhappy with Registration."

It seemed almost logical. "And you're telling me? Why?"

"So you won't think you're going crazy if your _lover_ " – she leaned on the word like it tasted bitter, but she couldn't spit it out – "Appears to be in two places at once."

"Thank you," he said.

"And because the rebels sent me to see if they could bring you into the fold. I told them it wasn't likely, but I'd try. So here I am. Want to quit your job, hide underground, and fight the Man?"

"Well, when you put it that way." Hank couldn't stifle a laugh. "Listen, Mystique, this just isn't a battle I'm willing to fight. Not on the front lines, anyway. The best thing I can do is obey the letter of the law, keep my head down, and do small things quietly."

"As usual," she said.

"I'm not the only one in my position," Hank said. "Charles, Kitty, Bobby Drake, Jen Walters – even Logan, in his way – we're registered. We look like we're behaving ourselves, and -" He paused to think of a way to phrase it without making a commitment, without speaking too boldly for friends who weren't in the room. "And most people don't have a particularly good sense of smell."

She sat, unmoving, as if suddenly aware of the scents around her. "Did you just give me a list of names?"

"Didn't I just tell you I wasn't going to do anything to help either side?"

"You did just say that," Mystique said. She transformed herself, not into Logan but into a nondescript woman with flat black hair and a floral thrift-store sundress, the kind of girl no one made eye contact with on the subway. Hank showed her out.

*

Hank, making coffee, missed Logan. In the morning, they were both quiet by nature, but two-person silence was different than silence alone. Logan called once a day from pay phones or burners in his series of undisclosed locations, urging Hank to talk about baseball games and his research, admitting finally that what he needed was to hear Hank's voice. On the darker days, all Hank got was a text message: _Still alive._

Hank's plans for the day were simple. He'd declined a summer school course this year, partially to spend more time with Logan but mostly because the Registration unrest made him want to hide in his lab and solve America's problems through science. The thermometer was on its way up to 95 degrees, so today he'd stay in his easy chair, directly in the path of the air conditioner blast, reading journal articles in his underwear. He'd printed out a hefty stack from JStor the day before and bought a new package of highlighters. Some pleasures were simple.

He took his first sip of coffee and gazed out the window. The East Village was still asleep – not quite time for brunch yet. The street, puddled by a late-night thunderstorm, looked ready to steam.

His window filled with shadow, then with sun-gleamed red and gold metal. Tony hovered at Hank's eye level and lifted his mask. Grinning impishly, Tony rapped on the window glass.

"I'll buzz you in," Hank mouthed.

Tony arrived at Hank's door in a t-shirt and jeans, having politely left his Iron Man suit in the lobby. He'd given Hank just enough time to find a clean pair of pants. Hank accepted an awkward hug and offered a cup of coffee. "Before you make your sales pitch," Hank said, "please realize that the answer is no."

"No sales pitch," Tony said. "Just a conversation. How's Logan?"

"Well." With Logan's healing factor, _still alive_ and _well_ amounted to the same thing.

"Still asleep?"

"On a trip." Sometimes a little truth was wiser than trying to hold a lie together.

"To where?"

"I'm not sure," Hank said.

"Wow," Tony said. "You two are _careful._ "

"We know which way the wind is blowing."

"So I guess I won't be able to ask for his help," Tony said. "But I can ask for yours."

Hank leaned back in his easy chair, sipped his coffee, and looked over his glasses at Tony. "Did you already forget how this conversation started?"

"It started with you letting me in," Tony said.

Hank pressed his lips together, unable to deny it.

"We need you, Hank," Tony said.

"To help you kill people?" Hank said, not quite angry but no longer composed. "I don't even do that when I agree wholeheartedly with a cause."

"To help me stop powerful people from harming the powerless." It was a moving sentiment but also an over-rehearsed one.

"You're going to have to find a way to survive without me," Hank said. "I did what the law requires. I'm registered. I signed a special waiver to make me exempt from government conscription, which is why you're here asking nicely instead of sending me my orders. But I wasn't a costumed superhero before this mess began, and I don't wish to become one."

"Of course you're a costumed hero," Tony said. "Waiver or no waiver."

"Not since the ‘70s."

"You know, they don't usually refer to my gear as a costume," Tony said. "They call it a _suit._ "

Hank scowled, feeling a growl at the back of his throat. He crossed his arms over the Mets logo on his t-shirt.

"How much do you spend a year on those custom suits?" Tony said. "I know you can't be buying them off the rack."

"It's not the same. I have to wear _something_ to work."

"But if you weren't a Mutant, you wouldn't wear that," Tony said. "I've seen pictures of you from before your transformation. Did you even know how to tie a tie?"

"With my feet. I was fun at parties."

"I'm being serious," Tony said. "I know, it's rare, so savor it. You've been cultivating this Gentleman Mutant persona for decades, and you've put more thought into it than any of these assholes in spandex. When you walk into a room, everyone knows what to think: you could kill them with the claw on your little toe, but you'd rather bore them to death with a biophysics lecture. That's the _definition_ of power, Hank."

"Having so much that you don't have to use it? Don't you think I've figured that out?" Hank leaned in toward Tony, making himself big and monstrous. "But I don't have enough power to make this stop. To make _you_ stop."

To his credit, Tony didn't cower, although his voice did shake when he asked, "Where's Logan?"

"I told you. He's on a trip. I'm not sure where." The truth had begun to sound dishonest.

"And Mystique?"

That one took him aback. "I never know where _she_ is." As Tony began a retort, Hank interrupted him, realizing he had a little leverage. "How's Ben Grimm doing?"

Tony cleared his throat nervously. "How do you know about that?"

"I hear things," Hank said. The gossip had threaded its way through Mutant school: Grimm had left the United States for a while. Even though they had quite a bit in common, Hank didn't know him well. Jen Walters did, though, and she'd passed along the cryptic email she'd received from him: _Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy._

"It might be better if you didn't listen so much," Tony said. "Remember that aiding an unregistered superhuman is a federal crime."

"I'll remember to keep my earplugs in and my air conditioner cranked up."

Tony stood and placed his mostly full coffee cup on the end table. "You do that," he said. "You let me know how that works out for you." Tony showed himself out. Hank stretched and basked in the refrigerated air, then watched as Tony rocketed into the sky. In his wake, the puddles on the ground rippled and plumed, a dirty midsummer dance.

***

**CHAPTER FOUR**

_You can dance in a hurricane  
But only if you’re standing in the eye_

***

Hank got a text message from an unfamiliar phone number. It contained an address in Trenton, New Jersey, and “I'll wear my gloves.” When Hank looked up the address, it was a hotel. As much as Logan's identifying inside joke made him hope they were meeting for pleasure, the secrecy and remoteness suggested otherwise. Boarding the train at Penn Station, Hank struggled to silence the part of his brain convinced that this was a trap. Were there ways to torture or threaten Logan enough to make him effective bait? Logan's body was invincible, but his mind wasn't.

On the train, a woman shielded her two little boys from Hank with her body. Hank smiled at the boys, letting his sharp canines show. One of the boys began to cry, but the other smiled back. Hank returned to his crossword puzzle.

Several minutes later, as the train crossed the Hudson, Hank heard a woman arguing with a conductor. When he looked up from his puzzle, he saw that it was the same mother who had recoiled from him before. “How do you know he won't blow up the train?” she shouted. The conductor escorted her to the far end of the car, out of earshot.

Another conductor, a portly black man, approached Hank. “I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir, but one of the other passengers says you've been scaring her children.”

“I might have smiled at them,” Hank said. “People have a variety of reactions to how I look. I can't do much about that, unfortunately.”

“I hate to do this,” the conductor said, “but may I see your registration papers?”

While Hank unzipped every pocket in his briefcase, trying to remember where he'd shoved his card, the conductor continued, “So, where are you headed today, sir?”

“Trenton.”

“On business?” the conductor asked. His tone had grown more pleasant.

“Pleasure. I'm getting laid for the first time in a few weeks.” Uncomfortable honesty made Hank sound like he had nothing to hide. He found his registration card and fished out his wallet for his state ID.

The conductor chuckled as he skimmed Hank's documents. “Good to know Mutants have booty calls, too. You got a girlfriend down at Princeton?”

“I'm meeting my --” Hank stumbled over a word he hadn't needed to say aloud before. _Lover_ felt right but old-fashioned; _boyfriend_ should have been the word but sounded ludicrous. “My partner's away on business and asked me to meet him down there.”

With a warm smile, the conductor handed back Hank's papers. “Everything looks fine here. I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience. Have an excellent weekend, sir.” The conductor walked to the front of the car to talk with his colleague. Hank tried to eavesdrop, but the train was too loud, even with his enhanced hearing.

The angry woman stayed seated and didn't yell, but the conductors weren't having much luck calming her down. It didn't help that one of her sons had begun to wail piercingly. Hank took out the pair of headphones he'd discovered while searching for his registration card and plugged them into his cell phone. When Kitty had transferred a few dozen of his favorite songs onto his SD card, he'd remarked upon the uselessness of the gesture, but he'd learned their purpose: drowning out bawling children on trains.

Just as Hank's attention had faded into the calming realm of Jim Croce's greatest hits and a major breakthrough in his crossword puzzle, the woman's voice cut through. “I can't believe you just let him sit there! Who knows what he has in that briefcase? We're all trapped on this train with that – with _that._ ”

In true Jersey style, a nasal-voiced woman yelled back, “Shut up, lady. Don't you watch the news? That guy's a goddamn professor or something.” The loud woman turned to Hank and smiled, her hoop earrings clanking at her cheeks. “I saw you on Rachel Maddow. I liked what you had to say.”

Hank fumbled with his phone to pause his music. “Thank you.”

“I got a question, though, if you don't mind.” She didn't sound like she cared much if he minded, but Hank was grateful enough for her shamelessness that he couldn't have minded less. “I read that people with superpowers have to register, and anybody who's a vigilante. But do they put on your card which one you are?”

“The card lists whatever special abilities the government thinks are important,” Hank replied with the glimmer of professorial enthusiasm he couldn't suppress when someone asked a smart question. He got his card back out of his briefcase. “In my case, they're worried about enhanced strength and rapid healing, more than my ability to finish a Sunday _Times_ puzzle and terrify small children at the same time.”

“But what if you're just a normal human who likes to wear a costume and fight crime?” the woman persisted. “Do they just leave that part blank?”

“I don't go around looking at other people's cards,” Hank said.

“So, like, if I went to the Department of Homeland Security and told them I'd rescued a guy from being harassed on a train by opening my big mouth, they'd make me register?” The woman sat down next to Hank.

“Depends on whether they think your outfit is a costume,” Hank said.

The man in the seat in front of Hank's turned around, folding his arms to lean over the headrest. He wore a patchy beard and a too-tight blue checkered shirt. “So if I'm, for example, a drag queen who knows kung fu, I'm probably breaking the law?”

Hank just laughed.

“He's not wrong, is he?” the loud woman said.

“I don't know,” Hank said. “The problem is, I don't think anyone knows.”

The bearded guy piped up again. “What if someone just showed up to register? Like, 'Hi, I'm a vigilante, I need a card'?”

Hank could see where this was going. In a perverse way, he loved it. “They'd probably give you the card and put you on the rolls. They'd have to even if thousands of people suddenly made requests. It's hard to prove that someone _isn't_ a masked vigilante.”

“Or a Mutant,” the loud woman said. “I saw a show once about a lady who could manipulate sound waves, but she didn't know it, she just kept getting these headaches until finally they figured out her mutation.”

“There are some people like that, who don't recognize their mutations until adulthood,” Hank said. “And some with minor abilities that they know about but don't discuss.”

The train was approaching Trenton by now. Hank shook hands with the loud woman and bearded man, wishing them luck. He took a taxi to the hotel, lulled by the Pakistani pop music that ruled out the possibility of conversation with the driver. It pleased him to be ignored.

Ignored by strangers, at least. Approaching the hotel's front desk, Hank realized how much he longed to be the center of Logan's attention. The woman at the front desk was surly as she gave Hank the key card. Hank couldn't tell if it was prejudice or if she was simply in a bad mood. He wanted to be free of that anxiety, to let Logan hide him from the uncertain world for a while.

Logan had fallen asleep naked and face-down on top of the white bedspread. Roused by Hank's attempt to tiptoe, Logan stretched and yawned, his muscles rippling as they shifted into place. He rolled onto his back and said, “Take off that fucking suit and come to bed already.”

Hank did as he was told. He pounced on Logan, kissing him, but Logan didn't return his exuberance. “This isn't what you summoned me to a hotel in Jersey for?”

“Sex isn't the only thing I wanted to see you for.” Logan didn't patronize Hank often, but when he was feeling his age, he excelled at it. “But clearly it's what brought you here.”

“I don't want your pity hand job,” Hank said.

“It was going to be a blow job,” Logan said, “and it was going to be out of respect, not pity – respect that you came all the way down here expecting one, and knowledge that you'll pay me back in kind when I'm ready for it. Unless you'd rather have a childish argument the first time we've seen each other in a month.”

“No, but good job killing my erection,” Hank said.

“That wasn't what I meant to do.”

“It was for the best,” Hank said, easing into the bed. He draped an arm across Logan's waist and rested his head on Logan's chest. “It's more fun when you're not a morose pile of existential dread.”

“Not sure how soon I'll get over that,” Logan said.

“I guess you can't tell me what happened.”

“I killed someone,” Logan said. “He had it coming, and it's far from the first time I took care of someone who needed to die. But it sticks with me. It builds up.”

“You could quit. Go back to teaching in Westchester. Even with Registration, I'm sure Jen could find you a way to decline violent jobs.”

Logan laughed deep in his chest, making the bones of Hank's face vibrate. “That's the thing. I don't want to. The more days I spend in a classroom, the more I'm sure of what I am.”

“Which is?”

“The guy who does the jobs no one else is willing to do,” Logan said.

Hank recalled the Logan he'd known, the one erased by time travel. That Logan had seemed content in his quiet life, a mostly-retired vigilante, good with kids. That Logan had thought he'd had all the time in the world; this one, despite his healing factor, heard the footsteps of his own extinction in every empty corridor. How could a man like him sit still? “Are you trying to leave me?” Hank said.

“I thought that was what you'd want,” Logan said. “After what I've done and what I'm getting into.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Hank said.

“I'm afraid of putting you in danger.”

“I can handle myself,” Hank said. “You know that. I thought that was what you liked about me.”

Logan lay silent. Hank wanted to look into his eyes and see if he'd maintained his stubborn resignation, but Hank couldn't move without elbowing Logan hard in the stomach. Logan would heal, but it would kill the moment.

“ _Love_ about you,” Logan corrected him, finally.

“But for some reason, you think I wouldn't love the same thing about you?”

“'S how it usually works out,” Logan said.

“I knew who you were from the start,” Hank said. “I've known you for forty years. Some version of you.”

“Yeah, a version who's a total stranger,” Logan said. “He was happy living in a mansion full of kids, teaching history. I don't think I'll ever know what kind of life I could've had, would've made me like that.”

“I don't know that you were _happy,_ ” Hank said.

Logan didn't answer, but Hank felt a gesture that he could not see, a nod or a scowl.

“I think you were used to it,” Hank said. “You accepted the life you had. But one of the things I keep noticing now, since the time paradox looped around, is that I've never seen you so happy.”

“The old me must've been one depressed motherfucker,” Logan said.

“He wouldn't let me close enough to find out for sure.”

“I just can't see what would've brought me there,” Logan said. “It's obvious he had an easier life than me.”

“Maybe that was the problem,” Hank said. “Maybe you're not meant for an easy life.”

Logan played with the hair at the back of Hank's neck. “Maybe we're alike that way.”

“What do you mean?”

“You make life harder for yourself,” Logan said. “Especially when you think you're making it easier.”

Hank was ready to argue with that but couldn't come up with any evidence to dispute the observation. He certainly hadn't chosen the easiest career path for a giant blue Mutant, nor the easiest place to live, nor the easiest man to love. But doing things the hard way always interested him more. He liked not knowing what would happen and the process of finding out. “Doing things the easy way never feels right, does it?” Hank said.

“I wouldn't say _never,_ ” Logan said. “But sure as hell not often.”

“So live the hard way, then,” Hank said. “Be a vigilante, an assassin, whatever you need to be. Come home when you can.”

Logan laughed, surprising Hank with both his timing and the catlike rumble of his belly. “Are you calling New York my home?”

“It is if you want it to be.” Inspired, Hank got up from the bed. He kept a spare key in his briefcase in case he locked himself out, but he could put it to better use. “Here,” he said, turning over Logan's gloved hand to press the key into Logan's palm. “So you can come and go as you want. Even if it's just for a hot shower and a cup of coffee, even if you leave without seeing me. It's yours.”

Logan sat up, tightening his fist around the key. “No more messing around in hotel rooms.” He grinned. Logan was wearing dogtags on a chain around his neck; he unclasped the chain and added the key. He pressed it to his chest for a moment, then kissed it.

*

Hank needed to train himself to stop answering the phone in the morning. If Logan had been there, Hank liked to think he would have swatted the phone to the floor or even stabbed a claw through it, even though he knew Logan had the same Pavlovian reaction to a ringtone as anyone. Hank swiped myopically at his yowling phone and muttered, “Hello?” in its direction.

“Hank, why are there five hundred people lined up at the Department of Homeland Security office in Midtown, demanding to be registered as vigilantes?” The speaker didn't identify herself, but Hank's phone recognized Jen Walters' office number.

“Beats me,” Hank said.

“Normally, I'd believe that,” Jen said, “but some of the people in line are mentioning you as an inspiration.”

“Kind of them, I guess,” Hank said, not really expecting to deadpan his way out of this.

“Do you know a woman named Yvon Bernal?”

“I don't think so,” Hank said.

“She's an immigration community organizer from New Brunswick, New Jersey,” Jen explained. “She led two hundred people to the city hall down there to register as heroes. She says she met you on a train.”

“Oh, _that_ woman?”

“So you do know her.” Jen might have sighed the same way if she'd had to bail him out after a bar fight.

“We talked on the PATH train,” Hank said. “She didn't tell me she was an activist, and I haven't seen her since.”

“But you sure planted an idea in her head.”

“I do that,” Hank said. “It's how I got tenure.”

This time, Jen didn't clarify her sigh with words.

“So there are really hundreds of normal humans registering as vigilantes?” Hank couldn't suppress a charmed laugh.

“Thousands nationwide,” Jen said.

“So what happens? Do they get turned away?”

“Every registration request has to be taken seriously,” Jen said. “They're receiving their cards and having their so-called special abilities entered into the system, just like you and I did.”

Hank grinned. Maybe this wasn't such a bad start to the morning, after all. “And rendering the system useless in the process.”

“Well, not useless if you want to search for a specific individual in the database. But if you're hoping to find someone to force to work for the government on some dangerous job nobody wants, or to create a meaningful list of people with potentially dangerous powers or skills, they've pretty much broken the system, yes.”

“Funny,” Hank said. “I doubt those were even the civil rights violations they'd meant to protest.”

“You think this is cute, don't you?” Jen said.

“I think it's adorable.”

“Well, it's not,” Jen said. “It's clever, it's powerful, and it's admirable, but it's way too big of a deal to be cute.”

“You think it's going to be a big deal?” Hank said.

“I think it can be. Who's booking your TV appearances?” In a sentence, Jen brought coherence to the entire conversation.

“There was only the one, and they contacted me directly. The rest have been going straight to the university voice mail system. Do I need an agent?”

“No. Just return your damn phone calls, Hank.”

“They really want me to do press?” Hank said. “Because Tony was pretty clear I should keep my mouth shut.”

“He probably wants you to,” Jen said. “But you and I don't work for S.H.I.E.L.D. We're private citizens with the right to voice our personal opinions.” It was the first time in this conversation that she'd sounded lawyerly, her words wrapping around policy and tugging it loose.

“I suppose that's the line you'll want me to keep repeating,” Hank said.

“You don't need me to ghostwrite for you,” Jen said. “You do avuncular rabble-rouser better than anyone I've ever seen.”

“Avuncular?”

“Own it, Uncle Hank,” Jen said.

*

Bobby sounded shaky on the phone. “I got called in by the Federal government. For superhero work. And I just - I didn’t know who else to call.”

“If you’re trying to get out of it, there’s not much I can do,” Hank said.

Bobby managed a laugh. “If I were trying to get out of it, there are plenty of people I could have called. I’m trying to figure out how to do it and not hate myself.”

“That’s a lot harder.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Especially since the job is to go down to the Yonkers DMV and - quote - ‘keep the peace, using force and/or special abilities as necessary.’”

“Are the rebels starting fights there?” Hank said. “I thought they’d stopped engaging S.H.I.E.L.D. in public. And you’d think the rebels would realize all those civilians lining up to register are on _their_ side.”

“Yeah, I think - I think it’s the civilians I’m supposed to be using force on. If necessary.” Bobby was seldom sarcastic, and his words dripped with venomous anger.

“So don’t use force,” Hank said. “If anyone asks, say it wasn’t necessary. And as for your powers - there are plenty of ways to use your Mutant abilities other than beating people up. Be creative.”

“I don’t know,” Bobby said. “Creativity’s not really my strong suit.”

“It’s 90 degrees out. You make ice. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“Hm,” Bobby said. “Maybe.”

Hank returned to his lab work. Today, he had cultures to monitor. It was the gooey part of his job that made him feel like a real scientist. If all went well, he’d be testing this version of his healing factor serum on rats within a year. The excitement of a promising experiment distracted him from checking his phone to make sure that Bobby was doing okay. 

A string of text messages almost vibrated Hank’s phone off his desk, and he stretched to grab it. Kitty was desperate to reach him. _Watch this,_ she’d written. _You’ll be so proud. Is there a Mutant gene for subversiveness?_

The last of the texts was a YouTube link, which he tapped open. The video was shaky, shrill with background conversation, and intermittently blocked by the back of some guy’s head. But it was clear enough what was going on. Bobby and two other Mutants had arrived at the DMV with three Costco-sized, shrink-wrapped multipacks of bottled water and a cardboard box full of those popsicle tubes that came in strings of room-temperature pouches. The other Mutants must have had enhanced strength, because they carried the heavy supplies as if they were pillows. Bobby approached the protesters in the registration line one by one, shaking their hands shyly before chilling water bottles and freezing popsicles on the spot. 

An alert from Hank’s news app flashed at the top of the screen. At a DMV on Long Island, the confrontations between protesters and S.H.I.E.L.D. troops had grown heated. Literally - an Inhuman with temperature control powers, pressed into service the same way Bobby had been, had sent eight humans to the hospital with third-degree burns after trying to drive them back with a wave of steam.

Not everyone was as clever as Bobby, or as level-headed under pressure. Those qualities might not have been mutations, but they were certainly gifts. 

Hank tapped back to his messaging app and found Bobby’s number in his contacts. _Proud of you,_ Hank wrote. _Any chance you saved me a popsicle?_

* 

Q: Our next guest is Distinguished Professor of Biology at Hunter College in New York, where he's been researching Mutant genetics for over forty years. But he's also a founding member of the X-Men and one of the most publicly visible Mutants in American society, in equal parts because of his distinctive appearance and his frank outspokenness about social issues. Dr. Henry McCoy, welcome to Morning Edition.

A: Thanks for inviting me.

Q: Can we start out talking about your research?

A: Sure.

Q: I know it's difficult to boil decades of work down for a radio interview, but can you give us a general idea of what you've discovered?

A: What I'm looking at is the genes of Mutants, trying to find patterns that explain their mutations. People usually perceive Mutants as diverse, but the mutations that stick, where Mutants survive and are healthy, have a lot of similarities. To use myself as an example, I certainly look different from other Mutants, but my abilities are pretty typical. I'm unusually strong and agile for my size, I heal quickly, and I have an efficient metabolism. And even my appearance, there are a number of blue Mutants, and that seemed strange for a long time until one of my former students, Sofia Mantega, figured it out. Blue people don't sunburn and are resistant to other forms of radiation as well. So it's finding patterns like that one, and seeing if the underlying genetics are consistent across the many Mutants with the same trait, which in the case of blue skin, it's pretty consistent, but some others, like healing factor, there are a number of genetic paths to that outcome.

Q: So you're using yourself as a test subject?

A: [chuckles] Well, my genetic samples are in there. But mostly I'm looking at digitizations of blood samples donated by hundreds of Mutants over the past forty years.

Q: How do you get a Mutant to volunteer? It seems like a lot of you resist that kind of paper trail.

A: Well, it helps that I'm one of them, and affiliated with the X-Men. But I have some friends who have turned me down, who just don't want their biology documented that way. It's more common, though, that Mutants want to understand what we are, and so they realize I can help them understand themselves better. That's put me in the position to get good voluntary results.

Q: Have you been able to add the mandatory samples collected as part of the Registration Act?

A: No, for a few reasons. The majority of people who've registered under the new laws aren't Mutants: most have no special abilities, and some acquired their abilities in ways other than genetic mutation. So maybe a tenth of the new samples would even pertain to my research, and of those, a lot would be duplicates of what I already have. I'd have to get funding for some poor graduate assistant to sift through them all. But more importantly, using the government's data would place all kinds of restrictions on my research, especially in terms of who I'm reporting to and how the information would be used after I published it.

Q: You sound like you have mixed feelings about the Registration Act.

A: As it relates to my research, yes, I think it's made many Mutants more hesitant to share information in general, which makes my job harder.

Q: And personally?

A: Well, I'm registered. I'm not going to flout Federal law. But it took a lot of effort to, for example, I had to get Hunter College to confirm in a bunch of different ways that I'm their employee and don't want a side job as a crime-fighter for the government. I had to assert my desire for personal freedom very aggressively. Most Mutants don't have the resources to do that, so there's a possibility hanging over their heads that they'll have to drop whatever they're doing and go work for the government, often to do things that put them in physical danger. And often just plain things they'd rather not do for a living. I have one friend who had to turn down a job offer, one that would have moved him forward in his career, because he wasn't confident he'd be able to show up to work every day. Registration forced him to be reduced to his mutation, and not recognized for the skills and talents he's chosen to focus his life on.

Q: So even though you're complying with the law, you oppose it?

A: I don't think it's a bad idea to have some kind of accountability. Traditionally, we've had private organizations like the X-Men and S.H.I.E.L.D. to keep an eye on superheroes, and as long as that worked, it was fine for the government to stay out of it. But a lot of people look at tragedies like the one in Connecticut and say, this isn't something you privatize completely. I think there's some validity to that point of view, but I also think the current legislation does more than we might need it to do, and that it's very tone deaf to the diverse needs and diverse lives of people with unusual abilities.

Q: Two groups have emerged in this issue: a powerful campaign to increase support for Registration, and an extremely vocal rebellion against government regulation. Where do you see yourself in that conflict?

A: I've made a point, consistently, of refusing to support either of those factions. The nice thing about being a cranky old scientist and a giant blue monster is, a lot of people aren't too happy with me, but they also know there's not much they can do about it.

Q: But at the same time, you don't claim neutrality. You've become strongly associated with nonviolent protest actions, and especially with inspiring anti-Registration activism.

A: As much as I try to keep my mouth shut, I have a hard time staying silent on this issue. I'm glad people like what I have to say. Pretty much all of the activism has been other people – Mutants and humans who are a lot more creative and courageous than I am. They're finding clever ways to keep the conversation open, and that gives me hope.

Q: Thank you so much for opening up the conversation here on Morning Edition, Dr. McCoy.

A: It's been a pleasure.

*

The heat wave had descended over New York like a sweaty space whale almost a week earlier and seemed to be settling in for a long, torturous August. Even with the air conditioning in his lab and apartment cranked up to the maximum, the sun and humidity seeped in from the real world. The view outside Hank’s window undulated and prismatized as the heavy air warped the light. 

The weather accounted only somewhat for the eerie quiet in Hank’s neighborhood, though; the rest, he knew, was concern for safety. After several weeks of reduced violence, the anti-Registration rebels had returned to the city’s streets, daring the pro-Reg forces to face them in battle. “Come out and take me by force,” a winged girl had shouted into a cellphone camera a few days earlier, standing next to the Astor Place cube. “The casualties are all on you.”

Foolishly, S.H.I.E.L.D. had taken the bait, injuring over a hundred civilians and killing two as they tried to shoot the unregistered Mutant down. Within hours, everyday humans had destroyed the police barriers around the cube sculpture and subway entrance, covering the pavement in flowers and chanting anarchist slogans.

And then S.H.I.E.L.D. had taken them down too, with pepper spray and tasers. Hank had been in his lab at the time, lost in statistical models. A small, angry twinge at the pit of his stomach insisted that if he’d gone to the demonstration instead, it would have ended differently. But in his rational mind, he recognized that his presence would only have made things worse.

With subway service suspended below 14th, Hank had little choice but to work from home today. He wasn’t getting much done - his mind kept wandering toward grief. Eventually, he gave up, cracked open a cold beer from the fridge, and zoned out in front of SportsCenter. 

The metallic crack of a key in his apartment door nearly scared the fur off of him. He reminded himself that it could only be Logan or the cleaning lady, and neither of them expected him to be wearing pants (although the cleaning lady did prefer them). 

Logan dropped his overnight bag on the doormat. “I thought you’d be at the lab,” he said. “But I’m glad you’re not.”

“I’m working from home. Sort of.”

Logan nudged Hank toward one end of the couch and sank in next to him. He leaned against Hank, head on his shoulder, and said nothing for so long that Hank thought he might have fallen asleep. Hank listened with one ear to the guys arguing about baseball on television, and with the other to the low rhythm of Logan’s breath.

Logan gestured languidly toward Hank’s beer bottle. “You going to finish that?”

“No, you go ahead.”

Logan drained the bottle in one long swig. “Sorry. Let me grab a couple more.”

“Want a blow job instead?”

Logan laughed and kissed him. Hank slid down from the couch to his knees, turning off the TV on the way down. There were times for exploration and creativity, but today Logan had come in hollow-eyed and heavy-boned. Hank gave him what he liked, head bobbing fast with his tongue curled under. Logan didn’t try to make it last, didn’t mumble instructions or growl encouragement. He was trying to flood his brain with endorphins and oxytocin, although he’d have put it in other terms. Swallowing, Hank hoped he could be enough to drown out Logan’s demons.

Hank got up, stretching. “Did you still want those beers?” 

Logan put his arms around Hank’s waist and pulled him forward. Hank could have dug his toes in and kept his balance, but he chose to fall into Logan’s lap instead. Logan kissed him, rolling him onto his back. The full weight of Logan’s body gave Hank the illusion that Logan had trapped him, defeated him. Logan rubbed Hank’s cock through his boxers, teasingly at first, then more intensely. Hank was happy to lie back and let Logan make him come. His own brain chemistry could have used some brightening up.

Logan stopped suddenly, and Hank, disappointed, grabbed his wrist. “Thought you didn’t like that,” Logan said.

“I don’t usually,” Hank said. “But it’s a strange day.”

Logan got lube out of the coffee table drawer - by now, Hank kept little tubes stashed everywhere in the apartment where they might need it - and pulled Hank’s boxers down just far enough to make his cock spring free. He went back to kissing, to pressing his broad chest against Hank’s, to stroking with his slick, gloved hand. Hank felt safe here, like anything that tried to get to him would have to go through Logan first. 

He spread his knees wider and grasped Logan’s ankles with his feet. Logan laughed into his mouth. “You and your little advantages.” Hank ran his foot up the rough skin of Logan’s calf. “You’re going to make me take my time when all I want is a beer and a nap, aren’t you?”

“If that was all you wanted, you’d be asleep with an empty bottle in your hand,” Hank said, gasping as Logan gave his cock a solid squeeze. Hank jerked up hard, and Logan matched his enthusiasm, escalating until Hank’s breath hitched. He came into Logan’s hand, clutching Logan with his feet.

Logan lay on top of him for a few minutes before going to the fridge. “There’s nothing in there except beer and mayonnaise.”

“You can live a long time on that,” Hank said.

“Let’s go out in a little while,” Logan said. “Up to that street with all the Japanese restaurants.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best place for us to be right now.” Hank sat up so Logan could rejoin him with the beers. “There was a big, stupid battle in Astor Place. I don’t know how many businesses will be brave enough to open their doors today.”

“I thought the rebels had quit taking their fight to the middle of the street,” Logan said.

“I guess someone got tired of sticking to the plan,” Hank said. As he described the destruction to Logan, the story sounded like an empty excuse for fear. He hadn’t let the Stamford disaster keep him home - why was he hiding now? The only way for their side to lose was to let the extremists wear them down. “It seems to have quieted down, after all,” Hank said. “What are you in the mood for? Sushi?”

“Cold soba noodles and a giant bottle of sake.”

“Sounds like you’ve given this some thought,” Hank said.

“If you knew where I’d been, you wouldn’t question it,” Logan said. “Especially the part about the giant bottle of sake.”

“But you can’t tell me.” Hank nudged in closer. He rubbed the back of Logan’s neck - not always Logan’s favorite move, but he’d shake Hank off if he wasn’t in the mood. 

Logan grunted appreciatively and tilted his head forward. “Secrecy’s part of the job.” He kept a long silence, letting Hank comfort him. “Used to be a part I liked. Still is, when I’m choosing the jobs. But this S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff they’re sending me out on -” He leaned his head against Hank’s shoulder. “The first mission they gave me, the target needed to die. But the things they’re sending me to do now, I’m not sure they need doing. Not like this.”

“They’re seeing how far they can push you,” Hank said.

“Pushing me right out of obeying the law, is what they’re doing,” Logan said. “I’m done. My line is farther out than most people’s, but I still have one, and I hate being forced to cross it. I’ve already lived through one hell on earth where the government destroyed the world trying to protect it. I’m not going to help usher in another one.”

“Do you want me to call Jen for you?” Hank scanned the room for his phone, although he suspected he’d buried it under a pillow in the bedroom. “She might be able to get you a waiver.”

“Already talked to her. No specifics, obviously. She said her hands are tied. Ran into Mystique, though, in the course of this last mission. No surprise she’s got a pile of money stashed away, some kind of shell company that can hire me full time. Not sure what she’ll have me do, but it’s better than killing in the name of Registration.”

“It’s better than all the other bad options, I guess,” Hank said. He threw back the rest of his beer. 

Logan raised his own bottle in a mock toast and did the same. “So. What do you say we go out and make the best of it?” _While we still can,_ he didn’t add, but Hank heard the implication loudly enough to shiver at it.

Logan knew just the place to get his noodles and sake; either he’d strolled the neighborhood without Hank, or he’d learned how to use Yelp. It was early for dinner, but a few other patrons dotted the small restaurant, slurping and chatting. In general, there were more people around than Hank had expected. New Yorkers were a relatively fearless breed, after all, and reluctant to waste a summer Friday.

As Hank and Logan awaited their check, a young couple at a table by the window took selfies, holding up a sheet of paper that said _#TakeBackTheVillage._ The sake was running slightly faster through Hank’s bloodstream than his healing factor, and he felt relaxed enough to catch the girl’s eye and shoot her a hearty smile. She came over with her sign, a little nervous. “Thanks for coming out,” she said. “Your support means a lot.”

“I didn’t realize there was something to come out for,” Hank said. “But it’s a smart idea. You’ve already got the, um, the Twitter thing going?”

“Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook - it picked up fast,” she said. 

Logan held up his hands. “I’m in no mood to be on any of those. But he’ll be happy to.”

“I’m the face of the movement, I guess,” Hank said. “Whatever the movement is.”

The girl missed the irony but understood the meaning. She handed Hank the sign and put her arm around his shoulder as she snapped their picture. Hank braced himself to go viral again. After this, he suspected he’d have to bite the bullet and sign up for some social media accounts.

The girl tucked her phone away and explained briefly. “It’s not a protest or anything. I mean, we all saw how that worked out. It’s just a call for people to get out of their apartments, take a walk, have a drink. Show they’re not afraid.”

“And make the Village so thick with people that nobody’ll start another battle on our turf?” Logan said.

“Something like that,” she said.

“Well, then,” Logan said. “Looks like we’re going to have to make a late night of it. Let Hank take a few more selfies.”

“Get you drunk enough to join in,” Hank teased.

There were more bars in Hank’s neighborhood than he remembered, and he and Logan sampled them in such brisk and determined succession that he knew he’d forget most of them by morning. It was hard to tell the old dives that had hung on since the ‘80s from the grungy-on-purpose refurbished basement joints, but in the end, it didn’t make a difference, any more than the revelers in their twenties wished to be distinguished from lifelong residents like Hank. They were all in this together, filling the streets and spending their money, safety in noise and numbers and drink specials. Social media had drawn people from all over the city, and by nine o’clock, it was tough to find standing room in some of the bars. Curious about the campaign’s reach, Hank checked his phone, to find that he’d received a text from Kitty: _Five of us heading your way. Just passed 125th. Where’s a good place to meet?_

She’d sent it ten minutes earlier, which meant they’d be at Grand Central by now. Hank had to ask a bartender where he was. Kitty and her crew of barely-legal trainee Mutants appeared so quickly after that, she had to confirm, laughing, that one of them was a teleporter.

Hank, Logan, and the kids headed down Avenue A in search of a less crowded bar. In the time since Hank and Logan had chosen their previous watering hole, a menacing line of S.H.I.E.L.D. troopers had assembled along the fence surrounding Tompkins Square Park. Hank worked hard to ignore how intensely they stared at his little crew of Mutants. He wished he could buy them all beers and draw them into the carefree spirit of the evening.

Seven drunk Mutants turned a bar crawl into a full-fledged X-Men mission. Everywhere they went, they drank for free, in exchange for selfies. Hank had no doubt that his undignified mug was all over the internet. He hoped the photos told the right story: that people with superpowers could go out and have fun without putting anyone in danger, and that S.H.I.E.L.D. was wasting its time sending out its jackbooted thugs to babysit.

The jackbooted thugs left well enough alone until last call. Hank’s fast metabolism, along with a few rounds of delicious bar snacks, had left him tired but mostly sober. But not too sober to whisper lasciviously in Logan’s ear, “Think you’ve got enough gas left in you to fuck me after we put the kids to bed?”

“With all of them crashing in your living room?” Logan hissed back.

“I thought you enjoyed danger,” Hank said.

The X-Men gathered on the sidewalk as the bar’s lights went on, but before Hank could herd them westward, a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. police surrounded them. “We need to see your Registration documents.”

Hank, like most of the others, dutifully dug in his back pocket for his card. But Kitty was running on tequila and adrenaline. “What for?” she demanded. 

“Just a routine check.”

“Why?” she said. “Do I look like a Mutant to you? Do you have some kind of powers where you’re able to tell, or do you just assume, since I sometimes hang out with blue people?” She pointed at a girl a few yards away. “Why not ask _her_ for her card? Or that guy? Or just stop everybody, because anyone crazy enough to be out on a night like this must be an unregistered freak. Normal people would be too scared, right? That’s what you’re counting on.”

“Relax, Shadowcat,” the S.H.I.E.L.D. cop said. “Your identity isn’t exactly secret.”

“Fuck that name,” Kitty said. “Stupid code names you people put on us so you can call us vigilantes. My name is Katherine Pryde, and I’m not a fucking vigilante.”

“You are if you can’t verify your registration,” the cop said patronizingly.

“Come on, Kitty,” Hank said. “You’ve made your point. Show him your card so you don’t get arrested.”

Kitty glowered at him, but she dug in her purse until she found her card. After the cop scanned it, she dropped it in the gutter and ground it into the dirt with her heel. “Fuck this. I don’t want to be registered anymore.” 

As she stormed away and the cops moved on, Logan picked up her card and pocketed it. “She’s not the only one.”

***

**CHAPTER FIVE**

_And I for one, and you for two_  
Ain’t got the time for outside  
Just keep your injured looks to you  
We’ll tell the world we tried 

***

Hank loved the rare day when he had his lab to himself. One of his grad students was technically around somewhere, but it was the one whose nature was even more solitary than Hank's. So Hank had cranked up his music to eleven and pulled his old beanbag chair out of the supply closet for a nap while the computer ground through data. By lunchtime, he'd have a new set of statistical models to interpret.

Neil Young must have drowned out the beep of a key card unlocking the lab, because a human voice almost stopped Hank's heart. “Nice sound system you've got here. Too bad you're wasting it on this MOR crap.”

“Who let you in here?” Hank didn't look up to confirm that it was Tony.

“I'm funding your research grant,” Tony said. “Two point three million dollars is enough to buy a lab key.”

“Ten minutes is enough to reprogram the reader after you leave.” Hank meant it good-naturedly, but it came out like a threat.

“And half an hour for me to re-hack it. If you want a nerd war, let's at least come up with a more interesting challenge.”

“A whole thirty minutes,” Hank said. “I should take that as a compliment, shouldn't I?”

Tony found a stool and straddled it, rotating the seat back and forth with his hips as if his energy would run down if he didn't continually wind himself up. “I don't respect many people's intelligence, Hank, but I've always admired yours.”

“Thanks. The feeling's mutual.”

“But you're wondering what I want from you,” Tony said.

“Something to do with the conflict you know I'm staying out of, I assume,” Hank said.

“Staying out of, my ass,” Tony said, raising his voice just enough to confirm this wasn't a social visit. “I heard that NPR interview, the pull quotes about civil liberties and immigration. And let's not forget the throngs of civilians lining up for fraudulent registration documents.”

“I haven't done anything illegal, unless the Registration Act contains exceptions to the First Amendment I wasn't aware of,” Hank said. “You can be angry as you want about my opinions, but you can't shut me up.”

“Don't try to outsmart me, Hank.” Tony's stool quaked when he kicked it with his heel. “That doesn't usually go well for people.”

“It's not _you_ I'm outsmarting,” Hank said.

“Then who?”

“That's not the point, Tony. This isn't personal. You and I disagree. I'm not going to keep quiet simply out of concern that I might hurt your feelings,” Hank said, trying to keep his tone calm, below a roar. “I'm not your enemy, Tony. That's not a role I'd ever want to play. But I think you're wrong about Registration, and the farther this goes, the more certain I am.”

“Sooner or later, I'll be able to pin something on you, Hank,” Tony said, menacing in his resolute smallness. “I know you're aiding the rebels, and it's only a matter of time before you slip and leave me a trail.”

“So we've devolved from debate into threats?” Hank said.

“No threat,” Tony said with a cruel smile. “Only a warning. Keep your head down, Hank. Watch who you share your opinions with. You don't want to see your grant funding pulled.”

“So you're going to resort to buying my silence?”

“If money's the only thing that can talk sense into you,” Tony said, “then I'm going to let it speak.”

Hank's lip quivered with rage. The college administration would stand behind him, but the lawsuit they'd file would mean a year of lost research. “You're right,” Hank said. “I can't fight back against this. But know that you're choosing this one cause over my friendship. I liked the man I thought you were, Tony. I hope you'll figure out who he was before you run out of friends.”

“Well, if that's how it's going to be.” Tony got up from his stool. “Good luck with your research, Dr. McCoy.” His footsteps echoed past the slam of the door, but Hank couldn't bear to drown him out with music.

*

Hank’s statistical analysis was just picking up steam when the fire alarm went off. One of the drawbacks to working at an urban university was, it took up vertical rather than horizontal space. Even in summer, an alarm sent hundreds of faculty members and students streaming into the stairwells. Hank’s office was on the ninth floor of Hunter North, so he had no hope of beating the bottleneck. While the high-pitched klaxon seared his eardrums, he unhurriedly packed his laptop, and then his shoes and socks, into his briefcase. 

The last time he’d leaped the gap between the roofs of Hunter North and Thomas Hunter Hall, it had been to drunkenly prove a point about Mutant biophysics to a bigoted colleague. The jump would be easier now. He knew he’d be an absurd sight, tumbling between buildings barefoot in his suit with his briefcase slung over his shoulder, but New York never minded absurdity.

He climbed the stairs, apologizing to stranded colleagues along the way. On the roof, Hank felt like he was standing in the middle of a desert, with the sun beating down and the hot wind whipping his face. He clambered over the safety railing and launched off the edge, pulling his knees into a tuck in the air to protect his briefcase. He landed about a yard beyond the edge of THH, having underestimated his own power as usual.

The door to the building’s staircase was locked, but Hank’s arm was stronger than the bolt. Hank felt bad about the property damage, but he figured that “trapped in a burning building” was a reasonable excuse. As he descended the stairs, he heard piano strains; it sounded like the fine arts departments didn’t take the summer off any more than the sciences. In the hallway outside the practice room, he found an unoccupied table and chair. A Chopin etude would accompany his work pleasantly. 

He opened up his laptop, but he was too rattled to work. He surfed Wikipedia instead and succumbed to the guilty pleasure of correcting the errors in a few articles on neurology and baseball. How had he failed to discover years ago that THH was an oasis of quiet? He’d always imagined it crammed with dancers and actors.

Hank enjoyed a solid fifteen minutes of solitude before a ballerina loomed over him with an accusatory glare. “Sorry,” he said. “Am I not supposed to be here?”

The ballerina’s skin faded from brown to blue, and orange hair spilled out of her bun onto her shoulders. “I assumed you’d go to the roof and make the superhero’s exit when the alarm went off,” Mystique said. “I didn’t think you’d hide out here. It took me forever to find you.”

“You pulled the fire alarm so you’d get to see me?” Hank said. “I guess I should be flattered.”

Mystique rolled her eyes. “Of course I didn’t pull the alarm. What do you take me for?”

“My apologies for immediately assuming that you’re the right hand of chaos,” Hank said.

“I lit a little fire in one of the chemistry labs,” Mystique said. “Don’t worry. A _little_ fire.”

“Apology rescinded forever.”

“But I _did_ do it because I wanted to see you.” She smiled as if this made up for everything.

He shut his laptop and stood. “I _have_ missed you.” They both shifted awkwardly for a moment before hugging each other hello. “There’s nothing like a crisis to remind you who your real friends are.”

She looked over her shoulder. “You chose a good place for a secret meeting. Some of these rooms are soundproof.” They ducked into a narrow, empty practice room, its walls padded with soundproofing. It contained two wooden chairs and a music stand. Mystique sat cross-legged on the floor; Hank straddled a chair backwards.

“Did Kitty get to you all right?” Hank asked.

“Yes. She’s fine. Putting the other rebels through their paces already,” Mystique said. “Logan’s doing well enough, too, as far as I can tell. As far as _anyone_ can tell with Logan, maybe.” 

Picking up on her concern, Hank asked, “What’s he up to?”

“Beer and Netflix, mostly,” she said. “I told him he could have a few days to unwind before -” She caught herself, as if there was something she wasn’t allowed to share with Hank. 

“He’s fine,” Hank said.

“He told me he’s up for whatever the Rebellion needs him to do,” Mystique said. “And what we need him for, it’s - for anyone else, it’d be a dangerous mission.”

“Logan doesn’t mind danger as long as he believes in the cause,” Hank said.

Mystique grinned. Had her whole purpose in coming here been to verify that Logan was on her side? “And what about you? Do you believe in the cause?” 

“You know very well what I believe,” Hank said. “What I’ve believed from the start.”

“So put your money where your mouth is, Hank.”

Hank shook his head. “I won’t fight. I need to keep my waiver, my job.”

“Your TV and radio appearances,” she said. “Yeah, we need you to keep those, too. The Rebellion has more brawn than it knows what to do with. But you have one thing nobody else has. Real estate in lower Manhattan.”

“You mean my apartment?” Hank said. “Because I need that, too.”

“Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t take it away from you,” Mystique said. “I might ask you to share, though. Just for a little while.”

“Well, you’ve already proven I can’t keep you out if you’re determined to break in,” he said.

“Nobody’s breaking in. Logan has a key. You gave it to him.” She rocked back against the wall. She was still wearing a leotard and tights. “Besides, it’s not me you’ll be sharing with.”

“I’m not at all comfortable with this, Mystique.”

“But you’ll do it, won’t you?” She flashed him a sweet, childlike smile.

“You know I can’t say no to you,” he said, a little less sarcastic than he’d intended.

“Don’t say yes to me,” Mystique said. “Say it to the people you’ll be helping. The Mutants _and_ the humans. Let someone crash on your couch, save the world.”

“Relax and take yes for an answer, Mystique. I’m coming to the dark side. I hear you’ve got cookies.”

*

Nobody called Hank’s home land line anymore except telemarketers, so he let the answering machine pick up. He would have given it up completely, but every so often, he needed to send a fax. Most unwanted solicitors hung up when he didn’t answer, so he was surprised to hear a message being left, and more surprised when he realized he was hearing Charles’s voice. He set down the glass he had not yet filled with Scotch and lunged for the phone just in time to keep Charles on the line.

“I thought you couldn’t call from Costa Rica,” Hank said. “Though I’m grateful to have you in my ear and not inside my head.”

“I’m in Westchester,” Charles said. “As you know, I communicate with Jean quite a lot, and she expressed concern about trouble at home. So I’m here to - I’m not sure what. Jean didn’t understand how thoroughly the bridges have been burned. But I persist in the belief that if I stick my nose far enough into Mutant business, I can make a difference.”

“It’ll be good to see you, at least,” Hank said. 

“Do you think you could come up today?” Charles asked. “My time here is short, and I think - I think it would be best to talk in person as soon as possible.”

Hank caught a commuter train north. The MTA and Port Authority had stayed resolute about keeping transportation moving as much as possible despite the looming threat of superhero battles, which Hank admired. The trip felt lonesome without the promise of Logan on the other end, though. Despite spending most of his life alone, Hank had grown accustomed to the presence of Logan’s touch, to Logan’s gravelly voice in his ear, to good sex when he wanted it, to a companion for drinking and TV. He wondered if domesticity and emotional commitment were the natural state of humanity, after all, or if he’d just found the right person to make him slide into it effortlessly.

In the heat, the few blocks’ walk from the train station to the Xavier mansion was brutal. As he opened the door and felt the anodyne blast of air conditioning, Jean jogged urgently down the stairs. “You have a lot of nerve coming here, Hank,” she said.

“You’ll notice I haven’t in three months,” Hank said. “And I wouldn’t now, if Charles hadn’t asked me to.”

Jean glared at him, lips pursed, and he couldn’t tell whether she was rifling through his mind or considering the context. Either way, her silence showed that she realized she couldn’t send him away. She said, “Well, as long as you’re here, you might as well take Logan’s things with you. What little he’s left behind. I can’t imagine _he’ll_ have the balls to show his face here.”

“And I can’t imagine anything you could do to him that’s worse than breaking his heart,” Hank snapped. He might have been nursing that wound for a long time on Logan’s behalf, since years before the time loop resolved. A wound that Logan himself did not remember - not the same way, at least.

“Do you think it’s been easy for me, Hank?” she said, with a cool even-temperedness that was worse than naked rage. “Just when he and I had made our peace, the Logan I knew was banished from existence and replaced by a stranger. A restless, haunted stranger. I’m sure that whatever made that happen, it saved the world, but I didn’t see it. All I see is the friend who I lost, who I’ll never see again.”

“I’m sorry,” Hank said. “I’m sorry the man you loved is gone.”

“It’s worse than that, Hank,” Jean said. “The man I loved never existed.”

“Sure he did. We all remember him. It’s the one _I_ love who popped into existence six months ago.” Hank gazed up the staircase, remembering forty years ago with photographic accuracy. In this same foyer, with the light slanting in at almost the same angle, Logan had told Hank they would become great friends, and the sadness in his eyes had belied something more profound. “And I feel every second of the decades we missed.”

“Don’t turn this into some kind of competition for whose pain is greater,” Jean seethed.

“I’m doing nothing of the sort, Jean,” Hank said. “Your pain is yours, and mine is mine.”

“Then what’s your point?”

“Why don’t you read my mind and tell me?” Hank said. “Right, because you know you won’t like the answer. Long after you and Logan split up, you acted like he still belonged to you, and he let you, because he hadn’t let you go. But that Logan is gone, and the new one has no patience for your shit. And you’re just now realizing how much you relied on his forgiveness.”

She shook her head like she’d run out of patience with the village idiot. “You can’t really think this is all about Logan.”

Hank didn’t have the energy to humor her. “Of course it isn’t. But I doubt we’d get any further if we dropped the convenient metaphor and talked about the war.”

“It’s not a war,” Jean said.

“Nobody calls anything a war anymore,” Hank said. 

Before Jean could fire back at Hank, Charles floated down the stairs, his hoverchair’s motor just loud enough to announce his presence. “What on earth are you two sniping at each other about?” 

“Oh, the usual,” Hank said. “Fighting over a boy.”

“Don’t trivialize this, Hank,” Jean said.

“I thought I came up here to talk about the future of the X-Men,” Hank said. “Instead, we’re arguing about whether I should care that my boyfriend hurt your feelings. It was trivial in the first place.”

Charles sighed noisily. “Drop it. Both of you.”

Jean apologized before Hank could get a word in. “I’m sorry, Charles, I just -”

“If you’d excuse us, Jean,” Charles interrupted. “I’d like to speak with Hank in private. As I did with you earlier.”

She didn’t protest, just stormed off toward the conference room. Charles led Hank up the stairs to Logan’s room. There wasn’t much left in it; Logan didn’t get attached to many personal belongings, and most of what he did own, he’d either taken on the road or left at Hank’s apartment. “Jean wants me to clean this place out,” Hank said. “I might need to borrow a bag.”

“He’s not returning, then?” Charles sounded curious and patient, but not surprised.

“Not to the school,” Hank said. “When he can come back to New York, he’ll come to me.”

“You sound certain of that.” Charles smiled approvingly.

“I have reason to,” Hank said. “I don’t know exactly where he is, but I have an inkling. He and Kitty left together. They’re as safe as they can be, and they intend to stay that way.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Charles said. 

“I’m sorry my word is so vague,” Hank said.

“It’s all whispers and half-truths these days,” Charles said. “But I suppose that’s how a war works.”

“It’s the best weapon some of us have.” Hank turned his back, not wanting to discuss it more. In Logan’s closet, he found a heavy trunk, probably older than Hank himself was. There wasn’t much inside: a few knives that looked more decorative than deadly, a stack of letters tied together with fraying twine, a pair of decaying boots, two unopened bottles of extremely fine Canadian whisky, and a photo album. If Hank could have crawled into the trunk and curled inside, it would have been like lying in Logan’s arms.

The surge of longing gave Hank a way to change the subject. “So, you and Erik, then.”

“It’s about time, isn’t it?” Charles said. Hank didn’t have to turn around to know that Charles’s face had lit up. “And we’re both far too old for it, of course. And yet - it might be just the right time, after all. For us to step away, to take pleasure in the time that’s left. Returning here, I thought I’d be able to calm everyone down, to engineer a compromise as I always have. But I’m not sure it’s my place anymore. The X-Men, the school - they will survive in some form. Jean and Scott will see to that. But the world has changed, and the community I envisioned for Mutants is no longer relevant. We achieved it, Hank. We achieved it _too well._ And now it’s time for something new, something I can’t lead.”

Hank wanted to take Charles’s speech more seriously, but they’d been friends too long. “So you’ve decided to quit and run away with your lover?”

“I’ve decided to retire to a subtropical paradise and revel in the miracle of surviving into old age as a superhero,” Charles said.

“And bang like teenagers?” Hank set aside Logan’s trunk and sat on the familiar bed.

Charles chuckled. “Neither of us has your healing factor, Hank. But we do fine for ourselves.”

“It’ll be strange to have you so far away,” Hank said. “I guess they have the internet in Costa Rica, though. And telephones.”

“Indeed,” Charles said. “They also have this drink. Guaro, a squeeze of lime, a splash of hot sauce…”

“Maybe when the war is over,” Hank said.

“You’d be safer there than here.”

“I’m sure I would be,” Hank said. “But as much as I’ve tried to sit this conflict out, I’m involved, and I’m needed here in New York. The Rebellion has constructed a delicate house of cards, and I get the sense that I’m standing on the bottom tier. I can’t see much of the structure, but if I’m pulled out, the whole castle will fall.”

“I’ve no doubt,” Charles said. “But I needed to hear it from you.”

Hank nodded, recognizing the expression on Charles’s face that meant Charles had more to say, but he didn’t want to step on Hank’s toes. 

“I could never do what you’re doing,” Charles said. “Leave the planning to others, trust them to see the bigger picture. But as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been content as a lieutenant. You’ve never asked to take charge. You’re a good leader, Hank. I’ve seen it many times. I don’t know what you’re so afraid will happen if you use that talent.”

“I’m not afraid,” Hank said. “I’m just not interested.”

“And God forbid you should waste your time on an endeavor that doesn’t interest you.” Charles seldom sounded so frustrated with Hank, so disappointed in him.

“Plenty of people want to take the reins on this one,” Hank said. “I have a role that no one else can play. Like I always have.”

“And I suppose you can’t tell me what role that is,” Charles said.

“I’ll tell you all about it when this is over,” Hank said. With a sudden burst of confidence, he added, “And it should be over soon.”

“You believe that the Rebellion will win?”

“I want it to,” Hank said. “I know that within the next couple of weeks, someone will have no choice but to concede. I hope - I hope it’s not us.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you this passionate about justice, Hank,” Charles said. “If this is Logan’s influence, then so much the better.”

“Maybe a little. Mostly, it’s that this whole war has been so damn _inconvenient._ It’s easy to stay neutral in a conflict when your own life is business as usual.” Hearing his own words, he had trouble bearing Jean any more ill will. Hank imagined that it would be easy, in suburban comfort, to wonder what everyone else was so worked up about. It wasn’t right, necessarily, but he understood.

“You’ve almost succeeded in making me feel bad about running and hiding,” Charles said.

“Don’t,” Hank said. “It’s not your fight. Or Erik’s.”

“Well. If I have your permission.” Charles turned his hoverchair to face the door. Hank had re-engineered its torque controls about ten years earlier, and they maneuvered smoothly, if he did say so himself. “Then I’ll leave you alone with Logan’s things for a moment. And the illusion of normality.” Charles paused. “In the meantime, I’ll find you a ride home. You weren’t planning on hauling that thing onto the train, were you?”

“I won’t have trouble lifting it,” Hank said. “But you’re right, I’m not sure where I’d put it once I was aboard. And looking like I do, with heavy baggage on public transportation… you’re right. Unfortunately.”

Charles telepathically congratulated Hank on understanding his limitations, then hovered around the corner and out of sight. Alone, Hank packed Logan’s meager possessions into the trunk: a few toiletries, winter clothes, a brown leather jacket that reeked comfortingly of decades-old cigar smoke. He checked the drawers and found the cigars responsible, packed into a humidor inlaid with a mosaic of polished wood. Hank wondered who had given Logan this beautiful box, and what Logan had done to earn the gift. He wondered if Logan himself remembered, or if the story was lost to the time loop.

In the same drawer, Hank discovered a yellowed mid-twentieth-century edition of _The Art of War,_ a stack of cheap paperback spy novels that looked like they’d been purchased at airports in the ‘80s, a dictionary of Japanese _kanji_ characters, and an edition of _Leaves of Grass_ that might have been signed by Whitman himself. Hank took pride in the fact that Logan secretly owned books.

And that was all. When Hank latched the trunk closed, empty space rattled inside. He sat on the bed, marveling at how much sparer the room looked now, even though Logan had never decorated it. But he only had a moment to take it in before a girl popped her head around the doorframe. “Professor X asked me to give you a ride home, Dr. McCoy,” she said. “You know, whenever you’re ready.”

Hank looked up and smiled. “Thanks, Megan. I think I’m all set. Let’s get on the road.” Megan had taken his AP Biology class a few years earlier. She was the kind of student who got A’s on her labs and C’s on her exams. Hank wasn’t sure if her pink hair was a mutation or a fashion choice, although the fluttering dragonfly wings that poked from both ends of her tank top were definitely the work of evolution.

Hank carried the trunk down the stairs on one shoulder. Charles and Bobby waited at the door to see him off, but the rest of the remaining X-Men had made themselves scarce. Bobby, clearly trying to lighten the mood, asked, “How heavy _is_ that thing?” But no one mustered a laugh. Jean, Scott, and Marie’s refusal to wish Hank well confirmed what Charles had implied earlier: there were no X-Men anymore, at least not in the way that he and Charles had dreamed of in the beginning. Hank felt like he was carrying a coffin.

Megan led Hank to an elderly gray Honda parked around the back of the mansion. “You’ll have to put that in the back seat,” Megan said. “My trunk is full of crap. The front seat, too. Sorry about that.” As Hank wedged Logan’s belongings through the rear door on the driver’s side, Megan frantically gathered empty water bottles, protein bar wrappers, and a pair of hot pink stiletto heels from the passenger seat. “Dr. Xavier asked if I could teleport you back,” she explained. “But I can only do short hops, and Manhattan is so full of buildings and people and stuff that it’s hard for me to land accurately. So we’ll have to travel the Muggle way.”

The _Harry Potter_ reference served as a code word. The books had struck a chord with the Xavier School students for obvious reasons, and their embrace of all things Hogwarts had led to one of the most irritating faculty meetings of Hank’s life. Jean had worried that the word “Muggle” was disparaging to humans, and she’d wanted to discourage the students from seeing themselves as superior. Hank, who had normally endured the meetings in coffee-soaked silence, had mumbled, “Why don’t we burn the books while we’re at it?” just loud enough for Jean to hear. It hadn’t been the most heated or painful argument he’d had with Jean, but it might have been the one that had made him come the most dramatically unglued. They’d spent the next fifteen minutes systematically pushing each other’s buttons while the rest of the X-Men had watched, the basis of the conflict long forgotten while they had dredged up every old resentment they could think of. 

In retrospect, he could have handled the matter more adeptly.

Hank had littered his AP Biology exams with _Potter_ references for years afterward. As a result, he had an undeserved reputation as a fan that had persisted long beyond his spite. 

“I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t sell my car yet,” Megan said as she merged onto the Bronx River Parkway. 

“I imagine it would be useful up here,” Hank said. He wasn’t in the mood for small talk, but silence felt dreadful. “But what do I know? I let my license expire years ago.”

“Yeah, it was, but I’m moving to Brooklyn,” she said. “Me and three other Mutants from the school - it’s the only way we can afford an apartment. We’re used to sharing rooms, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”

“Congratulations. You’ve found a place?”

“In Bushwick. It’s - okay, maybe ‘nice’ is too strong a word.” Megan laughed at her own irony. “But we’ll fix it up. And it’s better than staying in the X Mansion. Since Ms. Pryde and Rogue left, we’ve basically been on lockdown.”

“Rogue’s gone?” Hank said. “When did that happen?”

“She went to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. about a month ago,” Megan said. “Mr. Summers freaked out _hard_ when he found out. I’m afraid the four of us are going to have to sneak out in the middle of the night. And it’s going to be even worse for Mr. Drake.”

“Bobby’s leaving.” Hank felt more relief than surprise.

“Yeah, he’s been helping us out a lot, figuring out how to set ourselves up in the city,” Megan said. 

“As superheroes?” Hank heard a glimmer of hope in his own voice that he didn’t expect.

“Maybe,” Megan said. “For now, I’m working at a hair salon in Williamsburg. Glad I finished beauty school after all.” She fluttered her wings. “People are much friendlier to Mutants there than in the ‘burbs. I didn’t realize.”

“It’s not like I’ve been keeping that a secret,” Hank said.

“Yeah, but when they recruit you, the line they give to your parents is, you’ll be so much safer in Westchester,” Megan said. “And maybe that used to be true, but now, it’s like, you’re so exposed up there, all the Mutants in one place with a big sign so the people who hate you know where to find you.”

“I see your point, but I think it’s good for young Mutants to meet other kids like them,” Hank said. “I wish I’d had a school like the Xavier Institute.”

“When you’re a kid, sure,” Megan said. “But sooner or later, we need to grow up and leave the nest.”

“That, I agree with,” Hank said. “But it’s scary when the time comes. People get frozen in your mind the way they used to be, and it’s hard to accept when you can’t shield them from the world anymore.”

“Harder for some than others, though.” Megan gunned the engine to merge onto the Hutchinson River Parkway, and the car shuddered before it purred into gear. “I mean, you’ve known me since I was nine, and you’re talking to me like I’m an adult.”

“I guess I don’t know any other way to talk to people,” Hank said.

“That’s why they keep putting you on TV,” Megan said.

For the rest of the ride home, Hank let Megan dominate the conversation. She was an interesting kid, and he’d spoken his mind so much this afternoon that he’d run out of words. When Megan dropped him off in front of his building, she invited him nervously into a goodbye hug, which he accepted. “Let me know if you need help getting settled,” Hank said. “Or if you’re in the mood for letting an old guy take you out for coffee and a bagel.”

Hank hefted Logan’s trunk into the elevator and managed to get a hand free just in time to hold the door for one of his neighbors. He couldn’t remember her name, but he’d seen her around often, a woman Kitty’s age wearing green medical scrubs and looking exhausted. “Redecorating?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s some of my partner’s things,” Hank said. “I picked them up from his old place.” It felt dishonest but natural to humanize the day’s events this way.

“If he’s moving in, you might want to talk to the co-op board,” she said. “I can’t imagine anyone will object, but they get cranky when you keep it a secret. When my fiance moved in last year - such a pain.”

“Thanks,” Hank said. “I’ll send an email.” It was a minor chore, compared to what was going on in the larger world, but all the more critical in light of current events. 

The doors opened on Hank’s neighbor’s floor. “See you around, Professor,” she said brightly. He resolved to figure out what her name was.

In his apartment, Hank found a bottle of Scotch and an empty glass right where he’d left them, and he poured himself a long-awaited drink while he reheated a plate of leftover Chinese takeout in the microwave. He switched on the TV; how could it be time for preseason football already? The game was pleasurably inconsequential, two teams he didn’t care about, testing players who’d mostly get cut from the final roster.

After Hank ate, he indulged his curiosity and took Logan’s photo album out of the trunk. Like everything Logan cared enough about to keep, it was worn but carefully maintained. Logan had organized the images and mementos by the people they featured. Some only took up half a page, while others filled as many as five. The album was ring-bound, its pages made of sturdy acid-free card stock protected with clear contact paper, although everything from before the 1940s had been cut from another book. Logan had captioned each artifact, usually with just a place and a date, but sometimes with a cryptic nugget of context: “always beautiful” or “after the gunfight” or “the night before I left for good.” For each person depicted, he’d written a name and a set of dates, accompanied by a letter code: B for birthdate, M for when they’d first met, R to mark the duration of romantic relationships, and D for date of death.

Hank browsed for some time. So many of the people that Logan had known - had loved - had died before Hank was born. Across time, Logan stood next to them, unchanging, his feral smile sometimes lit with delight, sometimes masking pain and grief. The majority of the pages didn’t denote a romantic history, but the album nonetheless recorded dozens of women, as well as more men than Hank had expected. Logan had already stayed with Hank longer than with most of them.

Hank flipped forward, toward Logan’s days with the X-Men, toward the overlap between their lives. He purposely skipped his own page, expecting to linger on it and therefore saving it for last. There were still plenty of images of people Hank had never met, but the familiar faces grew more plentiful as Hank progressed through time. Even the ones that might have stung made him smile nostalgically instead: after all, the photo of him kissing Jean was almost twenty years old, and the date marking the end of their relationship sat emblazoned next to it in permanent ink.

The final entry in the album was a Xavier Institute student who’d been born in 2001. The only photo of her, so far, showed her holding up an award for best history paper of 2016 while Logan looked on at her proudly. After that, a stack of blank pages waited to be filled. Hank returned to the image of the smiling student and saw a bizarre, haunting reality in Logan’s eyes: this was the first page in forty years that contained no memories rewritten by the time loop. A long section of the album must have looked like a stranger’s life to Logan. Hank had admired the old photos of faculty parties and graduation ceremonies with a range of emotions, sometimes fond and sometimes bitter, but Logan could not claim the same recognition. Worse, he’d probably opened the album to find his familiar memories replaced, friends and lovers erased.

With that elegiac thought in mind, Hank turned back to his own page. He’d merited one sheet of cardstock, front and back, although Logan had added an empty page after it, a flattering vote of confidence. The first photo was a Polaroid from 1975 of Hank in a hideous brown leather easy chair, a joint smoldering between his fingers. In the picture, Hank looked peaceful, but he remembered it as a tumultuous phase of his life, choosing to forego the serum, to sacrifice his body and his safety for his work. In the decades that followed, Logan had arranged snapshots that Hank had forgotten they’d taken, most with beer bottles in their hands. At the bottom of the second page, Logan had added three items recently: a newspaper clipping of the now-iconic shot of them at the Stamford vigil; a color printout of Hank kissing Logan’s cheek, with “#TakeBackTheVillage” and the name of a bar on 7th Street written below it; and a charcoal rubbing of Hank’s apartment keys. 

By themselves, those images were enough to bring a tear to Hank’s eye, but the statistics were what did him in. Hank’s birthdate had been crossed out and rewritten; Logan had been off by a year on the first try. Logan had filled in the date of their first meeting as “Spring 1973, Westchester” and written a D for “death” but left it blank. The real kicker sat next to the letter R: the date in April when Logan had dropped by with flowers and booze to receive a kiss, followed by a dash and an empty space. Of all the romances in the album, Hank’s was the only one with no recorded end, with a future currently infinite.

Hank stroked that rectangle of blank paper with his fingernail. It was the reason they had no choice but to fight this war. It was the reason they needed to win.

 

***

**CHAPTER SIX**

_Send lawyers, guns, and money  
The shit has hit the fan_

***

Someone was sitting in Hank's apartment when he got home. Again. "Mystique?" he called out reflexively, although he didn't smell green Jell-o. But he didn't smell Logan, either, and Logan would have greeted him at the door with a shove against the wall and a tongue in his mouth, after this long. Hank's cock stirred, and he grimaced. This all needed to resolve itself soon, because the energy he expended missing Logan was eating away at him.

"Sorry to disappoint you," the man on Hank's couch replied. He was wearing a hooded jacket and sunglasses that obscured his identity, but he pushed back the hood and took off the glasses as he stood to shake Hank's hand. "Steve Rogers. I don't think we've met."

"Stars and garters, how do people keep getting _in_ here?" Realizing this wasn't much of a greeting, Hank shook Captain America's hand.

Steve shrugged his broad shoulders. "They gave me a key."

"They?"

"The Wolverine," Steve said. It was strange to hear Logan called by his costumed name. "He told me it was his personal key, and he'd slice my face open if I lost it."

“I’m not sure I actually agreed to this,” Hank said, although when he looked back on it, Mystique had indeed twisted his arm until he’d given in. If he’d known he’d accepted the most wanted man in America as a houseguest, he might have held out.

"It's too late," Steve said. "I'm here. I can't leave. You're in."

"I own this place, and I can throw you out if I want to," Hank said.

Steve sized him up. "You might actually be strong enough to do that."

Hank sighed. "I guess it won't do anyone much good to turn you over to the authorities." He sat down on the couch and patted the spot next to him. "It's only a one-bedroom, so you'll have to sleep on this."

"I've slept plenty of worse places," Steve said. He took the seat he'd been offered. "It's a hell of an apartment, especially for this neighborhood. Rent controlled?"

"Co-op, but I've owned it for so long, it might as well be."

"Smart of you," Steve said. "Gee whiz, the East Village. I didn't know it so well back then, but even if I did, I don't think I'd recognize it."

"It's going through a respectable phase," Hank said. "There's still a few junkies lurking around Tompkins Square Park, if you look hard enough."

"I wish I could go out and see for myself." Steve stared longingly out the window. This small symmetry of word and action nudged Hank further toward trusting him.

"You'll be able to soon," Hank said. "At least, I assume that's the goal of whatever plan I'm not being let in on."

"I don't know the whole thing. Nobody has all the details, not even Mystique, and most of this was her idea. All I can tell you is, I'll be here for a couple of weeks, tops, and by then they'll have accomplished their main objective."

Hank brushed off his offense, knowing he was being kept in the dark not as an insult but as a precaution. "Good. I shouldn't know more than that." But that didn't mean he couldn't put a few pieces together on his own. "So Mystique's going to be throwing your shield around for a week or two?"

"Nah, she's going to have to grow her own." Steve flipped up the flap of his duffel bag to reveal star-spangled metal. "I doubt she'd be able to lift it, anyway."

*

Hank hesitated for hours before calling Jen. He found all kinds of reasons to worry that his call wouldn’t be welcome: they weren’t that close, and she’d assume he needed another favor, especially since an unidentified attacker had just blown up a S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet over the Long Island Sound. Finally, he gave in. He was running out of friends too quickly to let this one go, and he’d run out of things he felt safe sharing with Captain America.

“Hank!” she said. “I was just thinking of you, hoping you were well.”

“I’m holding it together,” he said. “How about you?”

“Oh, you know,” Jen said. “Still alive, still in business, can’t complain.” She sighed sharply. “What do you need?”

“Nothing in particular. Just checking in.”

“Well, you know what I could use?” she said. “A cheeseburger and a milkshake.”

Hank shivered, thinking of Mystique. Had she taken over Jen’s life or intercepted her phone? No, that was the war paranoia talking.

He must have paused too long. “You’re not up for it.” Jen sounded crushed.

“Not at all,” he said. “I’m just… making sure I’m not missing some kind of hidden meaning.”

She laughed. “Nothing to decode. I’m just bored and craving sugar. And if _you_ come with me to Shake Shack, then we’re a _pair_ of big, scary superhumans that nobody will have the balls to bother.”

They met at the original location in Madison Square Park. Only a few years earlier, the place had been a phenomenon, with lines that stretched for blocks. Now, it was just another fast food chain, although an unusually good one. Jen had arrived first and secured a spot in line. Waiting in the sun felt like baking in a solar-powered oven, although a wispy breeze mitigated the heat. 

Right after they ordered, Hank spotted a pair of businessmen clearing the remains of their lunch from an umbrella-shaded table. “I’ll pay you back,” he told Jen before he indulged in a burst of Mutant speed to snag the table. Some might have seen it as an abuse of his powers, but those tables were precious commodities.

“Well done,” Jen said as she set the tray of food down on their table, and Hank handed over the cash he owed her.

“You know, I always thought it was empty rhetoric when superheroes talked about ‘defending our way of life,’” Jen said. “But I will fight to the death for my right to eat a cheeseburger and a S’Mores shake in a public park.”

“The cheeseburgers are lucky to have you on their side,” Hank said. “And so am I.”

“We’ve made a pretty good team, haven’t we?” Jen said. “Team Too Arrogant to Pick a Side.” She tugged a french fry out of its wax paper bag. For a moment, Hank thought she might dredge it in her shake, but she just folded it in half and chewed.

“No, we picked a side,” Hank said. “Picked it early on, too.”

“I guess we did, at that,” Jen said. “In any case, I’ll be happy to work with you again, the next time we find ourselves on the same side.”

Through a mouthful of cheeseburger, Hank said, “Let’s get through the current crisis first, shall we?”

“Fair enough.” Jen stirred her shake thoughtfully. “What are you planning on doing if we don’t get through it?”

“Not much left to do if you’re dead,” Hank said.

Jen laughed darkly. “No, not like that. But what if we’ve put our trust in the wrong people? Or if the plan falls through despite our best intentions, or if we give it everything we have and are still overpowered? Do we just go back to our lives? Can we?”

“I don’t know,” Hank said. “I’m bad at contingency plans.”

“Me too,” Jen said. “That’s why I was hoping you’d have something.”

“As long as we have roofs over our heads, I think we wing it,” Hank said. “Regroup and move forward. Find a way to do what good we can in the world we’re stuck with.” They both sat silently for a few moments, eating and letting the weight of his words sink in. After that reflection, Hank added, “Like anyone does when faced with a loss. We can crumble, or we can keep adapting. And as a geneticist, I’m not a fan of dead ends.”

“As a lawyer, I’m not, either,” Jen said.

“So we see it through.” Hank raised his shake cup in a toast. “Team Arrogance forever.”

Jen tapped the side of his cup with the lip of hers. “Until the end that isn’t an end.”

*

The big battle erupted in Midtown on a Sunday morning. Hank had not been invited; the rebels had emphasized that his ignorance would be crucial, and S.H.I.E.L.D. was too fed up with Hank's big mouth to imagine they could make reliable use of his muscle. The battle was as much viral video pageantry as actual warfare, and the first images reached the internet in real time. Cameras shook, and cellphone videographers coughed as smoke filled the frame. Hank watched not to parse the events but to see if his friends were okay. The X-Men were officially sitting out the action, which accounted for most of his concerns. He squinted for glimpses of Logan or Jen but found none. The Rebellion had probably benched Jen for the same reasons as Hank. But Logan – Hank understood why he couldn't know, even as tight clots of speculation jammed in his throat. He tried to console himself: Logan could literally survive anything. But if harmed, he would suffer, and Hank wouldn't be able to hold him afterward.

Captain America died on cue, taking a blast from Iron Man's hand cannon and dropping from the sky like a broken bird. Hank couldn't tell if the corpse was Mystique in disguise or some other illusion. Hank was certainly the only person who knew for a fact that Steve Rogers was on his couch, eating cold lo mein from a takeout carton and guffawing at a _Naked and Afraid_ marathon. Hank had offered to share his computer screen, but Steve had said, “Don't worry, I know how to use the remote control if I change my mind.” Hank couldn't blame Steve for choosing reality TV over news footage of his own death.

Hank's phone stayed silent. For once, he'd remembered to turn the ringer off. He planned to issue an official statement later in the day, once it looked plausible that he'd had time to collect his thoughts and compose it. In reality, Hank had written the statement days earlier. He only needed to revise it to incorporate the details of the footage he'd seen.

He checked his phone anyway. He saw nothing from Logan – a disappointment, but an expected one. Jen had texted, though, and Hank called her back, knowing the sound of her voice would reassure him.

“It's not what it looks like,” Jen said right away.

“I know,” Hank said. “I'm sure the two of us have completely different pieces of the puzzle.”

“And we need to keep it that way.”

Hank glanced at Steve, who was doing sit-ups in front of the TV. “Of course.”

“Probably the only thing I can tell you is that I'm home in my pajamas eating cereal, a borough away from anything interesting,” Jen said.

“I'm at least in Manhattan, but Midtown might as well be the moon,” Hank said. “Funny how no one called either of us to say there was a battle going on.”

“I did hear you'll be getting a package from Canada in about a week,” Jen said, barely bothering to keep the message cryptic.

“The delivery man lost his key. Should I leave one with you?”

“It's all taken care of, Hank,” Jen said.

Hank sensed a connection between Logan's whereabouts and Steve's next steps. “The important thing is, America will survive this.”

Jen didn't speak for a moment, and Hank imagined a puzzled expression before she broke into the laugh he heard. “We've survived worse, haven't we?”

Hank thought of the stories Logan had told him about the Sentinels. The conflicts of the past few months were so far from Armageddon, they seemed trivial. “We have, and we will again,” he said.

They said their goodbyes and hung up. Steve rolled to his feet from an ab crunch. “Who were you talking to?”

“My lawyer,” Hank said.

“Can you do me a favor?” Steve said. “Go on the computer and see if we won.”

“We might not be able to tell yet.”

“News travels fast these days,” Steve said.

A single image wallpapered the entire internet. Tony knelt in Times Square with his helmet on the ground at his side. Tony's suit had suffered scrapes, dents, and singes; a spray of exposed wire dangled from his elbow. A crater of shelled-out pavement smoked behind him, but the LED advertisements glowed overhead, undamaged. In his lap lay the body of Captain America, a fatal wound spilling blood and viscera from his belly. His shield remained on his hand, tilted against the ground. Tony held his fallen friend, weeping.

“Click here for live press conference,” _The Bugle Online_ advertised callously. Hank clicked.

He'd half expected Tony to turn up, miraculously healed and groomed in an expensive suit. Instead, the Mayor addressed the throng of flashbulbs. She was in the middle of her required litany of platitudes: terrible loss, everyone's sad, time to rebuild, make New York safe for tourists and commercialism. Fortunately, she moved on to more substantial matters. “In light of today's tragedy, Congress must revisit the application of the Superhero Registration Act. I still believe that the spirit of that law is necessary to protect American families. However, we must ensure that those Americans who risk their lives to save us from evil are protected as well, and treated equally as American citizens, with their Constitutional rights preserved and their freedom, property, and privacy safeguarded.”

Steve let out a whoop of delight.

“Let's hope they follow through,” Hank said.

“Let's fight to make sure they do,” Steve said.

“You go ahead and fight,” Hank said. “That life isn't for me.”

“You go ahead and pretend you're not fighting, kid.” Steve's eyes crinkled into a smile that made him seem suddenly very old indeed.

***

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

_Well, if you want to sing out, sing out_  
And if you want to be free, be free  
‘Cause there’s a million ways to be  
You know that there are 

***

Steve was gone by the next morning. On the coffee table, he'd left an 8 X 10 manila envelope with “Thanks!” written across it in black marker. Inside, Hank found Logan's apartment keys, a slightly squished package of pink Hostess Sno-Balls, and a USB drive wrapped in blue electrical tape. In the same black marker as on the envelope, but different handwriting, the USB drive said WATCH ME.

Cautious, Hank rebooted his computer in safe mode. The drive contained two video files named first.flv and second.flv. He opened them in the correct order.

The first showed the Mayor of New York sitting at a table. She morphed into Mystique, who said, “Thanks for your help, Hank. I owe you one. Don't be shy about collecting on your debts. Oh, and enjoy your disgusting snack.”

The second video began with Logan at the same table. Mystique walked into the frame, waved, and stood in an open doorway in the background. Logan said, “Hi. I miss you. I'll see you Friday at the latest. I'm not letting 'em keep me past then. Don't open up those Sno-Balls 'til I get back.”

From outside the door, a female voice commanded, “Show him your tits!” Hank recognized it, after some thought, as probably Kitty's.

Logan rolled his eyes and pulled his t-shirt over his head. He flexed and blew a kiss. “Love ya.” Hank had never heard Logan speak so shyly.

Hank rewatched the second video six times before he forced himself to get ready for work.

*

Preparing a grand romantic gesture by Friday seemed impossible, even though the biology department had given him special research leave for the fall semester. The college probably saw it as an opportunity to increase visibility and raise some funds, but Hank saw it as a chance to put out a few articles and hide from humanity. Hank had neglected his research for politics too long. He locked himself in his lab for twelve-hour shifts with Steely Dan's greatest hits cranked up so loud that a passing colleague asked him how his midlife crisis was going.

The latest version of Hank's healing factor serum showed promisingly consistent results in mice. It was too bad he'd never get permission to test it on human subjects. Or perhaps for the best: few people had the inner fortitude to navigate immortality with Logan's finesse. Still, he filled out the forms, so he could show that he'd given it a shot.

The universe refused to let Hank bury himself in work. The president of his co-op board called him Monday night to tell him that he'd been added at the last minute to the agenda for Wednesday's meeting. He sat through an hour and a half of squabbling about tuck-pointing and the freight elevator before the board unanimously approved his petition for permission to add Logan as co-owner of his apartment. The resolution pleased the board so much, Hank thought they might throw confetti. He assumed they were just happy to agree on something, but at the snack table after adjournment, Hank got hugs from neighbors he barely recognized. After a hefty handshake and “Congrats, Professor,” from Mr. Kaufman – the only board member older than Hank – he realized it was him they were happy for.

On Thursday, the downtown 6 train wasn't running due to an act of mundane supervillainy involving cyborg rats, so Hank had to take the longer walk home from the F. September had encased Manhattan in one last blast of sidewalk-steaming heat, and Hank's short-sleeved button-down shirt felt like five layers too many. He passed a jewelry store with a window display of rings arranged on top of a rainbow flag. One caught his eye, a simple platinum band with one blue stone and one yellow stone. Romantic impulses and the lure of air conditioning brought him inside.

He'd never taken the design specs for Logan's gloves out of his briefcase, so he had Logan's ring size on hand. That meant he couldn't back out now.

The sole employee behind the glass display cases, a trim man with silver hair, upheld the polite fiction of pretending not to recognize Hank. Gay men and Mutants developed a similar air when they reached their sixties: they'd survived, and as a result, they no longer quite knew what to do with themselves. “I was admiring a ring in your window,” Hank said.

“Oh, wonderful. Which?” The man sounded frightened of Hank, as people sometimes were when they knew they had no reason to be.

“The one with the blue and gold stones.”

The shop clerk smiled with comprehension. His voice shook when he met Hank's eyes to speak to him, though. “Do you have a ring size, or is this a complete surprise?”

“Yes to both,” Hank said. “I'm pretty sneaky for my size.” Hank unfolded the glove specs while the man pulled a drawer out from behind the counter.

“We just got these in, so we have a few sizes in stock,” the man said. “If they don't match up, we can order the right size from the designer or just resize down later if you're in a hurry.”

Hank hadn't thought this through enough to know whether he was in a hurry. On the one hand, he and Logan had plenty of time to decide whether their relationship was made to last. On the other hand, Hank had been single for seventy years, and that was long enough. When he'd learned that his alternate-reality counterpart had been married, he'd felt envious. But he'd also found out he was capable of becoming a married man. “What do you have in an eleven-and-a-half?”

The shop clerk studied his tray of rings. “I have this in a twelve.” He held it up to the light. It was a little different than the one in the window, with a subtle swirling pattern, but it held the same two stones, blue and yellow.

“I'll take it,” Hank said.

“You don't have to decide so fast,” the man said. “I can show you others.”

“That's all right,” Hank said. “I have a long history of making spontaneous decisions and managing the consequences later.”

“And that's worked out all right for you?”

“I'm still here.” In this reality, at least, he remained unimpaled. “It's made me who I am.”

The man smiled, satisfied with Hank's answer. “Then it's your ring.”

Hank put the astronomical charge on his credit card and tucked the bag into his briefcase. On the walk home, he didn't give another thought to what he was carrying, but once inside, he took the ring out to look at it. Tears welled in his eyes. It belonged to him, and that made it real. He hid it in his nightstand drawer next to the package of Sno-Balls.

*

The day Logan came back to New York, the heat wave broke. He appeared at the door soaked from a flash-flood thunderstorm, no key to let himself in. Hank would have accepted a soggy embrace, but Logan, practical and single-minded, stripped his wet clothes off, leaving them heaped on the doormat. In the bathroom, he helped himself to a bath towel and wrung out his hair. Hank waited for him in the bedroom, unhurriedly unbuttoning his cuffs. Logan got a clean t-shirt and jeans out of the bureau and held the folded pile up to his nose. “Fabric softener,” he said. “Didn't even realize I missed that.”

“You aren't going to put those on, are you?” Hank said. His open shirt hung off his shoulders, and his suspenders looped parabolically at his sides.

“Not if you don't want me to.” Logan lay down on the bed, arms spread wide as if waiting to be filled. His soft cock rested against his thigh, probably too travel-weary to be the focus of his intentions.

Hank took his clothes the rest of the way off, angling his body so Logan could watch him undress. Steve's visit had put him out of the habit of walking around naked, and Hank was eager to return to old vices. Especially when Logan was there to squeeze him in thick arms and drench him in tired, starved kisses.

Hank grazed Logan's scruffy jaw with his teeth. “I missed this the most,” Hank said. “Touching you, and your smell.”

Logan wrestled an arm free to stroke Hank's hair. “Good thing. It's been a few days since I've seen a shower. I must be ripe.”

“You're not so bad,” Hank said. “I think the rain hosed you down.”

“As long as you don't mind,” Logan said. “I've missed you a hell of a lot more than soap.”

“Glad to know where I stand.”

Logan kissed Hank, making Hank think this was as much intimate conversation as Logan could handle. But Logan spoke up between kisses. “I've had people before who've offered this. A bed and a kiss when I want it, a patient heart.” He sounded like he'd been rolling these words smooth in his head for days. “I've even said yes before. Given it a shot. Every time, I'd stick to it for a few months, maybe a year, and then I'd stop coming around. But you – maybe it's 'cause I'm wiser now, but I think it's more like, you aren't hoping to tame me. You don't believe I'll get used to clean sheets and good coffee, see the light, and stick around longer. You only want to have me as much as I can be had, and that makes me want to give myself to you as much as I can.”

Hank held Logan silently for a long moment, breathing his scent, as if he could inhale the words and carry them in his blood. “I love you, too,” was the only reply he could think of to do Logan justice.

They kissed again, sustaining it this time, hands in each other's hair and clawing at each other's shoulders, rolling around to pin each other to the bed and kiss some more. It felt more playful than sexual. Hank pushed Logan down, one knee between Logan's legs, holding down Logan's wrists with his right hand and his left foot. He could have planted a flag in Logan's chest.

“Your toes are an unfair advantage,” Logan said, looking like he wanted to suck on them, not disable them.

“Serves you right for taking all the wind out of my grand romantic gestures,” Hank said.

“How'd I do that?”

“You had a whole speech planned,” Hank said. “All I did was get you stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“A co-op shares certificate and -” Hank cut himself off, reluctant to ruin the surprise.

“And what?”

“Um -”

“Come on, Hank,” Logan said, worry edging into his mischief. “I've got a bad track record with surprises.”

“A ring,” Hank said.

Logan squirmed free with a finesse that became less shocking when he popped his elbow joint painfully back into place. “Let me see this ring.”

This proposal wasn't going as Hank had expected, although truth be told, he hadn't come into it with much of a plan. He took the jewelry box out of the nightstand drawer where he'd stashed it. When he opened the box to let Logan see inside, Logan snatched the ring from its satin nest and put it on himself. Logan held up his hand, admiring it.

“I didn't actually propose anything yet,” Hank said.

“You gave me a ring,” Logan said. “I put it on.” He leaned in to kiss Hank. “I think it's pretty clear where we stand.”

It was clear, but Hank couldn't shake off his disappointment. He would have let it go, but when he figured out the problem, expressing it felt safe enough. “I've been speaking in code for months,” Hank said. “It'd be nice to hear a 'yes.'”

Logan smiled sympathetically. When he was happiest, his eyes almost disappeared into creases. “Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“Can you say yes to something for _me?”_ Logan said.

“I hope so.”

Logan hesitated, looking at his ring like he feared having to relinquish it. “Come to Japan with me.”

“Yes. When?”

“I got a job there. An old friend tapped me for it when I was stuck playing clean-up for S.H.I.E.L.D. It's something he's been waiting a long time to see resolved, and I owe him.”

“You want to go _now.”_ Hank's incredulity at the time frame overshadowed his relief that Logan didn't seem to envision a permanent move.

“There'll be a plane for us at JFK as soon as I say the word.”

“Can you give me a week?” Hank said.

Logan stared at Hank for a moment, his expression so impassive that Hank assumed he was angry. But he clasped Hank's hands and grinned. “Only a week?”

“I have a colleague at Todai I'd love to catch up with. He'd vouch for me so the college can make it part of my research leave.” Hank squeezed Logan's hands. “It'll be wise for me to get away for a while. To be conveniently absent during the next crisis.”

“That bad?”

“Mostly just tiring,” Hank said. “People seem to think I'm a superhero again. Maybe if I'm halfway around the world, they'll forget about that.”

“Not fucking likely,” Logan said. “You're pretty hard to forget.”

Hank kissed Logan's cheek. “You meant that as a compliment. Thank you.”

“I understand why you want to disappear,” Logan said. “But I've lost you before, and I know the world is worse off without you.”

“Then I'll have to stick by your side awhile, so you can keep an eye on me,” Hank said.

*

Hank had a lot to do before he could leave, and Logan extended his lead time to two weeks. The easiest part was reaching out to Dr. Shishido, whom he'd met in the audience of a disastrous panel at a genetics conference in São Paulo in the early '90s. They'd gotten stinking drunk on cachaça, and Shishido had revealed that he was a Mutant. Shishido was an odd man, solitary and depressive, occasionally on the edge of supervillainy. He sounded shaky on the phone, enough that Hank thought he might have sucked himself into a hero's quest masquerading as a research trip. In any case, Todai sent the necessary expedited documents, and Hunter College approved them. The half-expected interference from Tony never came, although no apology arrived, either.

He phoned Jen to settle his affairs. When he told her that he was leaving his apartment vacant for a couple of months, she tried to hide her outrage behind sarcasm, but he called her out on it. “It's just,” she said, “don't you think someone might want to live there while you're gone?” He agreed it was a fair point and mulled his options for the rest of the night. When he came to a logical conclusion, it surprised but pleased him.

“Bobby, I'm going to need a house sitter for the next three months. Are you interested?”

Bobby stammered, and Hank could picture him, turning blue instead of scarlet when he got flustered. “Of course, I'd be happy to, I just don't know why you'd – I'd assume you'd ask Kitty before me, or one of your grad students, or basically anybody.”

“Kitty’s going back to Westchester. She and Jean have hammered out some kind of peace. I don’t understand, but I’m willing to roll with it,” Hank said. “You're the one who needs a place in the city, what with the splinter group of Mutant heroes you’re leading.”

“I’m not leading anything,” Bobby said. “Advising, maybe.”

“Well, whatever you’re doing, you’ll have an easier time doing it from a nice one-bedroom in Manhattan, at least until you find a more permanent place.”

Cautiously, Bobby said, “Thank you.” After a few seconds, he repeated more joyfully, “Thank you so much, Hank.”

*

It took Hank a full day to pack for his trip, mostly because he over-thought every choice. When he found his “Distinguished Professor of Biology” shirt from Yonkers, he added it to the suitcase proudly, then dug into the back of his closet for his X-Men uniform. Charles had sent him one the last time they'd redesigned, a few years earlier, and Hank had never worn it. He packed it, feeling an uncanny twinge of suspicion that he might need it.

The cab driver to the airport didn't ask Hank and Logan where they were headed. They got flagged by TSA, unsurprisingly, because Logan had to explain to four different agents that it was his skeleton setting off the metal detectors, and Hank's appearance ran afoul of some guideline or other no matter how pleasantly he behaved. Fortunately, the pilot of their charter flight to Tokyo was in no particular hurry, and the flight attendant seemed dead set on plying them with champagne until they fell asleep.

“We're on the road to another bad idea, aren't we, Hank?” Logan said, taking his hand.

“We're on the road to a _lifetime_ of bad ideas,” Hank said. “Three or four lifetimes.”

“Only as long as you don't get stabbed through the chest in your sleep,” Logan said.

Hank patted his knuckles. “Keep your gloves on.”


End file.
